


from the rich to the poor they are mostly unkind

by jugheadjones



Series: Merry Christmas, Baby! [1]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bisexual Sweet Pea, Brotherly Angst, Christmas Eve, Coming Out, Crushes, F slur, Foster Care, Found Families, Frostbite, Holiday Fic Exchange, Holidays, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, Multi, Pining, Sickfic, Unrequited Crush, past/present/future fredsythe, southside serpents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-15 20:23:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 35,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13038741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jugheadjones/pseuds/jugheadjones
Summary: claire asked for some teen serpents, some sweet pea figuring out his sexuality, and a little bit of the messy family that jughead, fred, and archie used to be. i said: lets do it all at once, at Christmas.





	1. wild and sweet the words repeat

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ohmygodwhy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmygodwhy/gifts).



> featuring: far too much fred, a couple uses of the f slur, and some serpent characters (ricky, scott, julian and co) that belong entirely to claire - i'm just babysitting
> 
> yes i did research into taxes on scratch card winnings and then promptly disregarded it because i liked the number 600. we're gonna go with it.

 

> **When Joseph and Mary, who from David did spring,**  
>  **Went up to the city of David their King,**  
>  **And there being enter'd cold welcome they find,**  
>  **From the rich to the poor they are mostly unkind.**

 

**december 1st**

Fred says loving FP is like loving the winter: it’s loving something you know could kill you but that’s so nice to look at you don’t know you’re dying until it’s too late. Something sharp and brittle and icy but beautiful.

FP says loving Fred is like loving the hot days of summer: you get dizzy and sweaty and half sick to your stomach, but you don’t hate it. You can’t say you’re not warm.

Jughead thinks it’s maybe no wonder they didn’t work out if they were always feeling sick as hell around each other.


	2. from the rich to the poor they are mostly unkind

**december 21**

They have a new English teacher at Southside High, because Mr. Phillips went to jail for selling drugs and then got shot there. Sweet Pea guesses it was kind of a shitty thing to happen, but he can’t say he misses the guy. Mr. Phillips was always impatient with Sweet Pea for getting his d’s and his b’s confused, and Sweet Pea had no time for someone who was going to act shitty about something he couldn’t help.

This new teacher is big on creative writing. They’re moved on from talking about Ray Bradbury to talking about protagonists and story structure. And _prompts_. Miss Smitt is just crazy about prompts. Yesterday it had been _write about what you want for Christmas_. Sweet Pea had pushed his notebook away from him, horrified by it. Miss Smitt was new and young and sweet and naive and had no idea what she was getting herself into.

In the privacy of his own room and his own head, at his brother’s apartment, Sweet Pea had concocted his own answer to the prompt, a better one. _For Christmas, I want to fix what’s wrong with me. I want to know who I am inside. And I want to matter._ But you couldn’t write that down for a grade. Instead, he’d written nothing and passed in a blank sheet of paper. Miss Smitt had looked momentarily hurt when he did, hurt and kind of sad, and Sweet Pea had almost felt bad for it.

But, thought Sweet Pea, it was her own dumb fault if she expected anything better.

“You doing anything for Christmas?” Sweet Pea asks Fangs as they walk home from school. He and Fangs always walk together: Fangs’ house and the shitty apartment where Sweet Pea’s been living with his brother are in the same direction. It’s the only part of the school day that Sweet Pea looks forward to. There’s snow falling: December snow, thick, white, and toasty. The kind of snow you could lie down and go to sleep in. Sweet Pea loves it and pretends he doesn’t.

Fangs shrugs at his question. “the Conroys‘ll probably wanna go to church,” he says. Fangs never refers to his foster family as _my family_ or even _my foster parents_ , just the Conroys. Parents are people who love you, and family is something like the Serpents - people who would die for you. People you belong with. The Conroys are just people. Strangers. Fangs is just passing through.

This is his first Christmas with the Conroys: before them it was the Hutchinson's for two years, and then the Rhodes’ for eight months. Fangs is not a long-term accessory. The Conroys like him because they are old and tired of being foster parents. They like Fangs because he’s like one of those hairless cats: he takes care of himself and keeps out of sight most of the time. Fangs says they never foster anyone younger than fifteen. They want kids they don’t have to fuss about. I don’t mind it, Fangs had said. I don’t want them smothering me anyway.

“You ask for anything good?” asks Sweet Pea as they trek through slush. Neither of them have boots. Sweet Pea wonders what it must be like to have boots to wear in the winter, to walk around without your feet getting soaked. Sweet Pea already knows what he’s getting: new socks, because all of his have holes in them, new blades for his razor, some more hair gel, and then a movie or a game if Ace’s paycheck holds up. Right now, all Sweet Pea really wants is his health back. He’s had a cold all week, and it’s annoying as shit: his head is all foggy and his nose all stuffy and his throat hurts like a bitch when he talks or drinks water.

Fangs shrugs, and then smiles. Fangs is a man of few words. But he smiles a lot. Sweet Pea thinks that makes up for it.

He’s already bought Fangs a gift: dog tags with his name on them. He’d paid in full for them too: you couldn’t shoplift an engraving. It had taken him all month to save up, but he knew Fangs would like them. Fangs has a cousin in the Army and thinks maybe he’ll do that one day, if he can’t get a job fixing cars down at the garage. Sweet Pea knows Fangs thinks maybe if he was a thousand miles away from this place, he’d be safe. Fangs thinks if he just makes it to eighteen and gets his hair cut just right he won’t feel any of this shit anymore.

Fangs fastens and re-fastens the strap on his backpack. Fangs has nice hands. Sweet Pea likes to look at them.

“We’re having meatloaf for dinner.” Fangs says.

Sweet Pea’s stomach grumbles. He’s probably having Chef Boyardee for dinner.

“I’ll see you tomorrow?” asks Fangs, hefting his backpack higher up on his back. Sweet Pea thinks about the dog tags he’d be wearing next week, how they’d clink against one another when he did that and glimmer a little in the sun. Sweet Pea’s spent the whole week taking them out of the box and running his fingers over the inscription, like reading braille. FANGS FOGARTY. They were nice: something heavy and real.

“Yeah,” he says belatedly, when he realizes Fangs is still waiting for him to reply. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Cool,” says Fangs casually, and turns at the fork in the path, heading up past Pickens Park to his house. Everything was easy with him. Easy and neat and okay.

Sweet Pea turns toward the park and starts down the long road to home.

Sweet Pea’s been living with his brother, Ace, for the past year. Ace has an apartment above the grocery. It’s just the two of them, and Sweet Pea likes it that way, most of the time. If he ever thinks about having a father the way that kid Archie has a father it makes him go a little bit crazy inside, but he knows that’s stupid. No one he knows has a father, except for Jones. Sweet Pea’s dad fucked off when he was really little, and it’s just been him and Ace ever since. Ace has been in the Serpents since Sweet Pea was twelve.

It’s neat, having an apartment, or at least it has been until recently. The heater in their place is broken, is the thing, and the landlord is a piece of shit, wouldn’t even pick up their calls about it until last night. Claims he can’t send a guy out to fix it until Monday. So they’re sleeping huddled together in socks, sweatpants, layers of sweaters, winter gloves and hats. Sweet Pea’s hair gel is frozen solid. One of Ace’s friends is loaning him his truck while he’s in prison, and they’ve eaten a couple dinners crunched uncomfortably in the front seat just because it’s warmer. The past week has been spent in a rotation: one night at Ace’s girlfriend Becky’s, one night at Ace’s co-worker Sonny’s. A night on the floor at Julian’s, Ace sleeping in the bathtub, because that trailer is barely big enough for two people, let alone four. They’re running out of options, and Sweet Pea isn’t sure what the plan is for tonight.

He asks Toni once in private where she goes when her uncle kicks her out. Jones overhears because of course he does, nosy fuck, but he ends up being nice about it. Takes him aside and says if he needs somewhere to stay he can crash in the trailer with him. Only Sweet Pea would rather freeze to death than bunk with Jones, and he doubts FP’s trailer is much warmer anyway. They might as well stay in their apartment, because it was closer to Ace’s work.

So he tells Jones no, thanks, but they’ll stay where they’re at. And not just because Jones bothers him, either.

Really bothers him.

Most boys don’t bother Sweet Pea. That’s why he hasn’t grown up all stressed out about it, the way Ricky tells them once down by the quarry that he used to be. Toni wraps an arm around him that day, and Ricky laughs and says _thanks_ , and they look at each other like they’re part of some private club. Ricky has never bothered Sweet Pea, even though he knows Ricky looks at boys the way Ace looks at his girlfriend. It’s not just being a boy that does it. Sweet Pea doesn’t know what does it.

But Jones does it, a little. Sweet Pea knew he was different before Jones came along, but that was something he could ignore. Fangs made it hard, but Fangs made everything hard, and Sweet Pea was used to that by now. Used to looking away in the gym locker room, used to keeping his eyes from straying to Fangs’ hands when he tapped a pencil or chewed at a hangnail. Used to blocking out thoughts about how it would feel to hold his hand. (Soft, he’d decided. Fangs had soft hands.) Figured he and Fangs were one in a million.

Jones he hadn’t expected. Jones with dark, messy hair and a stupid hat and a self-assured attitude like the world owed him something and was about to deliver any day now.

 _He’s just not that into you_ , Toni said.

Well, fine. Sweet Pea wasn’t very much into him either.

He’s not sure what kind of person Jones is, if he’s gay, or straight, or likes both, or what. Toni says there’s more than that, but what the fuck makes Toni such an expert in human sexuality. Yeah, he trusts her, cause Toni’s smarter than all of them combined, but whatever. Toni can’t know everything all the time. He thinks maybe Toni knows what Jones’ deal is, but he doesn’t want to ask, cause then it’ll seem like he cares. And he doesn’t. Sweet Pea doesn’t give a shit.

It’s not that he hates gay people. Sweet Pea knows a lot of gay people. Ricky likes boys, and Toni likes girls, and FP Jones used to have a boyfriend in high school. They’re some of those people who swing both ways: girls and boys, either one.

 _Bisexual_ , Toni reminds him, is the word, and _look it up sometime_. Sweet Pea does not look it up. There’s no reason for him to.

His brother Ace can’t stand that shit, is the thing. He always complains about the fucking queers at the factory, how they don’t work fast enough, do their job right. Sweet Pea doesn’t know how the he’d react if he thought his little brother was one of them. He wouldn’t _hate_ him, Sweet Pea’s pretty sure. Ace isn’t a bad guy, or a hateful one. Ace is just about the best and nicest person Sweet Pea knows. But he might be a little sad, and Sweet Pea doesn’t want his brother to be sad.

Ace is counting on Sweet Pea getting a girlfriend any day now, is the other thing. He’s really excited about it. Asks him about Toni all the time, like he doesn’t know there’s never been anything there and never will be. Ace has been a ladies’ man all his life, and probably has never seen a guy’s hands that bothered him, not ever. So it’s okay that he laughs a little too meanly at those kind of jokes, talks about _people like that_ with a special little lilt in his voice, like it’s a joke Sweet Pea’s too young to know the punchline to. It doesn’t make him a bad person.

All Sweet Pea knows is that he can never tell him. The thing he’s felt before he’d even known there was a word for it. That was the real reason he hadn’t filled out Miss Smitt’s creative writing prompt: he didn’t know how to write that what he wanted for Christmas was for a certain brown-eyed boy by the name of Fangs Fogarty to look at him like he was special.

The heater’s still off when he gets home. Sweet Pea doesn’t even bother to take his jacket off, just shakes off the snow and sits down at the table. He doesn’t look at Miss Smitt’s homework, opens his math book instead because there’s a test after the holidays and he hasn’t thought about math in awhile. After about forty minutes it gets too cold to hold the pencil, and he puts his homework away.

They have one can of Chef Boyardee left in the pantry, and one can of creamed corn. Sweet Pea dumps the Chef Boyardee into a pot. Stands really close to the oven as if it’ll warm him up. Ace gets home just when it’s starting to bubble.

Ace looks tired all the time now. It makes him look older than twenty-two. Sweet Pea knows a lot of people who complain about being fucked over by the town, but he thinks Ace has more to complain about than any of them. He works long, shitty hours for low pay and spends his evenings trying to get his kid brother through grade ten. Sweet Pea has offered to drop out so he can help with the bills, but Ace won’t let him. Ace figures at least one of them should finish high school.

“Hey Sweets,” says Ace now. One of his hands lands on Sweet Pea’s hair, messing up the gel. “How was school?”

Ace is the only person who can call him Sweets. When they were younger, kids used to call Ace Eyeball. Sweet Pea thinks that’s a lot better than Sweets. No one wants to mess with a guy called Eyeball. Ace switched to Ace full time when he joined the serpents.

“It was fine. You know.”

“How come you didn’t take the bike?” Ace asks. Sweet Pea shrugs carefully. He’s been riding Ace’s bike since Ace started working, because Ace doesn’t have time to take care of it anymore. Sweet Pea’s taking care of it for him. But if Sweet Pea rides to school, he and Fangs don’t get to walk home together.

“It’s snowing. And I wanted to walk.”

“All right.” Ace looks at the Chef Boyardee on the stove and his face falls a little bit. Sweet Pea hates when his brother looks like that. “How’s your cold?”

“Better,” lies Sweet Pea, and takes a sip of water to prove it. Ace smiles a real smile for the first time, and Sweet Pea feels bad for lying.

“You did a good job with dinner,” says Ace, and Sweet Pea wants to tell him that of course he did, it’s Chef Boyardee, the same stupid thing they’ve been eating every other day for a month, dump the can in the pot, big deal, and that only a monkey could mess that up.

But Ace looks so hopeful, and he shuts his mouth, and he doesn’t.


	3. you'll be doing alright with your christmas of white

**december 11th**

Mary is a big name at Christmas.

Everywhere you go, you’re apt to find a couple dozen Marys. Mary sits by a wooden manger on the lawn of the Presbyterian Church and in the front window of the Main Street General Store. Little porcelain and wood-carved Marys are available for purchase everywhere from the high shops to the church flea market. The luckiest little girl in Sunday School gets to play Mary in the Christmas pageant and wear a blue dress that is nothing more than a huge pillowcase with a hole for a head.

Marys are always white, usually blonde, and never red-haired. Never in the history of theatre has there been such a coveted role that gets to do so little: Mary doesn’t have to speak, or move, or even emote. Even Joseph gets to ask the innkeeper for room at the inn. Mary just sits on her donkey, pregnant.

And smiles.

Mary Andrews thinks Joseph must have lucked out with that one. Jesus’ mother was everything your average scummy man looked for in a woman: beautiful, quiet, obedient, and best of all, a virgin. Mary carries Joseph’s child in perpetuity, and does not complain or miscarry or crave pickles. Mary would never want an abortion. Postpartum depression is not in her vocabulary. Mary’s vocabulary consists of four words: loving, holy, obedient and pure.

Mary Andrews was no virgin. _You weren’t even my first time_ , she’d said to Fred on more than one occasion, although he had been the first time it had ever felt good to her, had ever been whatever Hermione had promised her that great wonderful thing _sex_ was supposed to be. Fred laughs whenever she tells him and promises she wasn’t his first time either, that their good friend FP Jones had taken that crown in the backseat of their VW bus in the tenth grade. That was what drove Mary a little bit crazy about Fred - that you were guaranteed to make him laugh when you were just trying to piss him off. Worst of all, sometimes his laugh made you forget why you were angry in the first place.

Fred isn’t laughing now. Mary hasn’t heard Fred laugh for a long time. She sits down at her desk and looks at the framed vacation photo she keeps by her calendar: herself and her then-eight-year-old, with matching fishing poles and matching hair. Fred had taken the photo, but he is not in it. You don’t keep photos of each other after a divorce. If she wants to picture Fred she has to close her eyes. She tries it now. Brown eyes. Brown hair.

Mary is calling to tell him that she won’t be able to make it back from Chicago for Christmas. Fred isn’t taking it well. Mary went all the way to Bethlehem for her man. Fred does not see why Mary Andrews cannot make it to Riverdale.

“I’ll call to say goodnight on Christmas Eve,” she says.

“Better not.” Fred’s voice is cold. She can feel his anger vibrating through the phone line, up from the taut control in his voice and out into the receiver. The phone is hot in her hand, and it is like holding a piece of him: warm and angry and alive. The holidays are a busy time for her firm. But there is no way to explain this to Fred. Fred thinks in baseball games and snow days and PTA meetings. Not meetings, or clients, or promotions or court dates.

“And what about Christmas Day?” says Fred. “I suppose you’ll be working on Christmas Day?”

“My sister said she’d like to see me,” says Mary. She says this very carefully.

“Your _son_ said he’d like to see you,” Fred spits. “His name’s Archie. 5’9”? Red hair? Freckles? Does that jog your memory?”

Fred is yelling, which means Archie is still at school. Fred is yelling because he can’t fathom anything being more important than Christmas. Fred wants a Christmas-card Christmas. Fred wants a Norman Rockwell painting. Mary has to be there for that. Mary has to be loving, holy, obedient, and pure, like all perfect mothers are.

“Let me talk to him,” she says. “I can talk to him.”

“He’s at school,” spits Fred. “As if you don’t know.”

Mary is taken aback by him knowing that she had planned it this way. She supposes after sixteen years of marriage you get to read each other’s minds a little bit. Even the awful parts. Maybe especially those.

Mary doesn’t have time for Fred to be angry with her. She has a meeting with her boss at noon, and several phone calls to make before that.

She says something unforgivable.

She says: “Maybe for New Year’s.”

Mary already knows this is stupid. Archie is sixteen years old and has a brand new girlfriend. Archie will not want to see her for New Year’s. Archie will want to be with his friends. New Years is for parties, and silver dresses, and kisses in the snow. It’s Christmas that is for mothers. For Marys.

“I’ll send a present,” she says, and Fred laughs - the cruellest, coldest laugh she has ever heard out of him. It is a laugh like icicles and frosty wind. It is not a Fred laugh.

Her first thought is that she has never known or loved a Fred who would laugh like that. But she has. That’s something about knowing someone for sixteen years of marriage: you get to know and to love all of them. Even the nasty parts.

Christmas should not be a time for nasty parts.

But Fred hangs up, and there they are.


	4. no more let sin or sorrow grow

**december 22**

At five am on Friday, Sweet Pea feels like his head is being pierced with a thousand knives. His throat is too swollen to swallow, and the pressure behind his eyes hurts like crazy. He’s sore from sleeping in his jacket, and sweat has pooled under his armpits and at the back of his collar. Ace jostles him when he rolls over at five to get out of bed, and Sweet Pea stifles a moan with his pillow. 

“Sweet Pea?” Ace is getting dressed, quick as he can. “You taking the bike to school today, or what?” 

“I don’t-” His voice is barely above a whisper when he talks. The air around his head is freezing, and his toes feel like blocks of ice. “I don’t know. I don’t feel good.” 

“Sweet Pea?” He feels Ace tug gently on his shoulder and lets himself be rolled over onto his back, squinting into the dark. The movement jostles something in his chest and he coughs, thick and heavy behind his ribs. The sound is like a shot in the dark room. 

“Shit,” says Ace softly, the word gentle, almost loving. Sweet Pea coughs again, and a hot rope of soreness climbs up his aching throat. Ace winces. “Sweet Pea, you can’t go to school like that. You’re really sick, kiddo.” 

“I’m sorry,” rasps Sweet Pea. 

Ace bites his lip and puts his hand on Sweet Pea’s forehead. “Let me think. Becky’s working today. But maybe Clarissa-” 

Clarissa is Becky’s roommate, and she has a laugh like a knife and fingernails just as sharp and twice as long. Sweet Pea can’t imagine ever liking a girl like Clarissa. He swallows painfully so that his voice sounds stronger. “I’ll be okay, Ace.” 

“I should stay home with you.” 

Sweet Pea shakes his head. Ace sits down beside him so that the mattress dips under the two of them. Sweet Pea can smell his brother’s aftershave: it’s a woodsy, grown-up smell. Ace used to smell like motorbike oil and dirt. 

“Come on,” Sweet Pea protests when he looks hesitant. “I’m just going to be sleeping all day. It’s not worth it.” 

“You’re not making it up so you don’t have to go to school are you?” asks his brother, sounding almost hopeful, like he’s praying for a last ditch reversal of fortune. “Cause you know how I feel about that.” 

“I’m not,” says Sweet Pea, and his hoarse voice must convince Ace, who runs his hands anxiously through his hair. “Fuck, Sweet Pea, I’m staying home. You don’t deserve to be here all alone.” 

“I’m fine. Ace, we need money.” He feels fear creeping up in him, frantic and real. “You can’t.” 

“Sweet Pea, you’re the only brother I’ve got. We’ve gotta stick together, okay? One shift isn’t the end of the world.” Ace combs Sweet Pea’s hair through with his fingers. 

“Please don’t,” whispers Sweet Pea, his head feeling heavy on the cold pillow. “Come home at lunch or something. But don’t miss work for me.” 

“Sweet Pea,” sighs Ace, smoothing down his greasy hair. “It’s okay. I’ll-” He bites his lip again, eyes darting around the room, searching for an answer that isn’t there. “I’ll go to the store and get some cold meds.” 

Sweet Pea can feel his eyes welling up. They don’t have money for cold meds. Ace knows that. 

“Ace, I’m not that sick,” he offers. “It’s just my throat. I’ll go back to sleep until seven, it’ll be fine. I’ll go to school. It’s Friday.” 

Ace snorts, but Sweet Pea can see the temptation wavering in him. Ace wants to believe him. Ace wants it to be okay. 

“I’m really fine,” he promises. “I’ll call if I need anything. That’s what cell phones are for, right?” 

Ace looks at the clock. Ace is late for work already. If Ace is late too many more times he might not have a job for much longer. Ace’s boss doesn’t care much that it’s Christmas, at least not any more than their landlord does. Ace slept in his jacket and a hat.

“Okay,” Ace says finally. He takes one of Sweet Pea’s hands in his, and squeezes. “But I’m going to call to check on you, okay?”

“Fine,” says Sweet Pea, relieved. “Deal.” 


	5. said santa to a boy child 'what have you been longing for?'

**december 11th**

Fred buys the scratch ticket the day Mary calls and tells him that she won’t be back in Riverdale for Christmas after all, and he takes the news with a little bit more biting sarcasm than he’d expected from himself. She does it while Archie’s at school, naturally, expecting Fred to pass on the bad news the way he’d been left to pass on the news of their separation the morning after Mary had packed her bags. That’s Mary’s way: leaving Fred to the hard stuff and then running.

The scratch ticket costs him a whole three dollars, which is an unbelievable luxury these days, but Fred’s been without his morning coffee for awhile and figures he can make it work. He buys it at the convenience store by the Main Street Grocery, and tucks it firmly into his coat pocket so there’s no chance of the wind stealing it out of his fingers on the way back to the truck.

Fred’s not a lottery player, has never bought a real ticket in his life. Fred was raised not to gamble - the tiny wagers he and his sisters used to make with their toys or their allowance were always vetoed in a flash if they did them within earshot of his mother. In his mother’s opinion, gambling of any kind was an open door to sin, vice, and poverty. Fred’s managed to stumble into all of these even without it, and has no real interest in picking out lottery numbers.

The scratch cards, though, he’s been known to pick up once a year for Archie’s sake - Archie had inherited none of his dad’s common sense and all of his compulsive fidgeting, and took special delight in taking a quarter to the shiny squares to reveal the little numbers. His son was an absolute fanatic for the simple joy of demolishing a good scratch card, and if Fred remembered, he’d usually pick one up around Christmas time to put in Archie’s stocking.

Once Archie had made four bucks off one, which was a profit, however small - though Fred had been sure to remind his son after that the odds of ever winning anything beyond that were less than being struck by lightning, and that goofing with scratch cards was in no way a means of replacing your income. The one he picks out now claims you can **WIN UP TO 100,000 DOLLARS IN PRIZES!!!** and Fred smiles wryly at its tarnished, car-salesman optimism as the cashier rings him up. Fred could sure as hell use **UP TO 100,000 DOLLARS IN PRIZES!!!** but he’s about to be out three bucks instead.

He brings the mail in on his way home and leaves the scratch card in the stack - Archie’s out at football, and doesn’t usually root through the papers on the counter anyway. He takes Vegas for a quick walk and forgets about it. Vegas is a good dog - or maybe just getting old - and doesn’t tug too hard on his leash, even when a squirrel darts across the road just ahead of them. His ears prick and his tail thumps, but then he lowers his head and keeps walking. Fred lets out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. Loosens his iron grip on the leash a little bit.

Vegas isn’t really old - probably a sprightly thirty-something, in dog years, but it’ll come up faster on him now, and Fred isn’t really sure how many good years they have left. He hunkers down in the front hall when they get back so he can wipe Vegas’ paws of slush and snow, ignoring the twinge in the bad side of his chest when he does. The pet store on Main Street sells those little booties for dogs in cold weather, but Fred and Archie had both agreed that they’d die before humiliating Vegas in such a way. Vegas nudges into his chest and licks his face.

“You’re a good boy,” Fred whispers, scratching his fur, petrified for no reason of the day this dog isn’t around anymore. “You’re a good dog.”

Vegas licks him on the mouth.

He forgets the scratch card in the stack of mail until that evening. He’s making ice cubes for the tray in the freezer - Alice Cooper next door had one of those refrigerators that made their own with a horrific grinding sound, but Fred and Archie were stuck with the old fashioned way. The phone rings with a shrill, frightening bark and Fred jumps, spilling cold water all over his shirt and the crotch of his pants.

His first thought is that it’s Mary - Mary calling to say look, I’ve been an idiot, I’ve been selfish and irredeemable and I need to come see my son for Christmas after all, because I’ll break his heart if I don’t. But it’s not. It’s Hermione, and she wants to talk about the company.

Fred doesn’t.

He sits at the island for the phone call, stretching the cord to its full length, because he can tell by the tone of her voice that he’s not getting away in the next six minutes: his record for standing up on his own without assistance. He listens to her talk with an interest that keeps ebbing as if in self preservation, absently plucking the damp front of his t-shirt away from his stomach. He stares at the shimmering snow outside the window, the crystal-fine powder tumbling through the blue of the sky, collecting in drifts along the yard.

“Fred, are you listening to me?”

Fred screws his eyes tight shut and tries to focus. “Yes,” he lies.

“We should really decide before Christmas.”

 _Decide what_ , he thinks, but he knows the answer. Decide whose company it is.

Outside, a gust of wind catches the powder from the windowsill and spills it in a white flurry up against the pane. Fred fidgets with the corner of a nearby envelope, rolling the creamy paper between his fingers until it’s sweat-damp and ruined.

Was it a long game, he wonders, as Hermione keeps talking in his ear, her voice as light and melodious as church bells. Had she known since she’d first walked into his trailer what she was going to take from him? She must have believed Hiram would be out of prison eventually: hoped or believed or known. Was she biding her time even then, sowing her seeds, knowing full well he loved her still, would never resist her? Was this a plan? Or just an opportunity?

“Fred?”

“I’m listening.”

“I’m just asking you to think it over,” she says. “Will you give me a call back?”

Fred promises he will. Wishes her a Merry Christmas and says he hopes Hiram bought her a Fabergé egg. Hangs up before they can get too friendly.

There’s something stuck under his nails, and as he replaces the phone he works out curlicues of what looks like silver metal. Returning to the counter, he realizes he’s scratched a deep X into the surface of the scratch ticket, scoring two diagonal lines through which he can see blurry-ink images of fruit. He grabs a random coin from beside the stack of mail and starts scratching hard over the rest of it, burning off the stress of the phone call. He can always pick up another one.

The name of the game is simple: you’re trying to get three fruits in a row. His frantic tearing into the face of the card is revealing none of a kind: a banana here, a peach there, something that looks like grapes. Figures. Fred’s never been a lucky person. He looks hopefully at the legend on the back to see if a peach in between two plums is worth anything - he’d feel like a winner for making his three bucks back, if he’s being honest, and he needs a little victory today  - but he’s flat out of luck. His mom would have something to say about those missing three dollars if she were here, that’s for sure.

In the triple money section, he gets two cherries after another. _A-ha_ , he thinks triumphantly, smug at having discovered the ploy. That’s how they get you. Two in a row, which means nothing at all, of course, and when you think you’re going to scratch off a third you get a dud. Always in the triple money square, too.

He almost gives up without uncovering the third square. His hands have stopped shaking and the need to scratch something is passed. He’s ready to cram it in the wastebasket - really _cram_ , so that if Alice was snooping around his bins she wouldn’t think he was resorting to the lottery to pay his medical bills - and make a mental note to get Archie another one. Maybe a winner: four or five bucks on the next one, the universe owed his kid that, didn’t they?

He flips the coin off to the side, thinks of Mary asking if Archie was home from school knowing full well he wasn’t, and scratches off the last section with the nail on his middle finger.

He’s staring down at three cherries in a row.

Fred covers his face. Uncovers it. Turns the card over and reads the back. Once. Then twice. Again to be sure.

He turns it back around, expecting to have been mistaken the first time, but the three cherries are still there. He shakes his head to clear it and looks one more time. Unless he was dreaming, there was no getting around it. Fred Andrews had just won the lottery.

It was a godsend.


	6. it's all cold down on the beach

**december 12**

Six hundred dollars is what three cherries in the triple money score gets you, which is laughable in the face of his medical debt, but pretty sweet when you want to buy your kid something nicer than underwear for Christmas. Fred pockets his scratch card and heads downtown.

A really good fishing pole and reel had been the plan for this year, because before it had been music for Archie it had been fishing with Jughead. He wasn’t sure he wanted Archie down by Sweetwater anymore, but there were still parts of it that were safe: he and FP used to fish them growing up. If Archie took good care of it it could last him his whole life, but there was a special kind of irony in giving his accident-prone teenager six-hundred-dollar equipment of any kind.

Then again, he’d proved he could take care of the band equipment Fred had bought him. Maybe he’d look at guitars - those beautiful, glistening, gleaming ones above the shelves in the music shop where he went to buy CD’s. There was that beautiful red one just above the cash - he can see it in his son’s hand. Chuck Berry red. Or a big TV, or a new video-game system, or a really good stereo: the ones Archie was always looking at - only looking, because he knew better than to ask - whenever they passed the electronics store at the mall.

But then Archie would unwrap it, take one look at the expensive, gleaming, six-hundred-dollar worth of it and demand to know where they money came from. And when Fred told him he’d get guilty and unhappy that the money had gone to luxury instead of any of the million things they needed and couldn’t pay for. Fred knows his boy like the back of his hand. Archie would look up him with those bright, miserable eyes and

_(wish he’d gone to Chicago with his mother after all)_

(no, shut up, he’s not thinking about that)

be half in tears by the time Fred got around to explaining himself. Archie felt things acutely and sharply, and had reached a stage in his life where he felt it necessary to apologize for living. It frightens and hurts him to see it. He doesn’t want to put any extra stress on Archie, however much his son deserves a big TV or a guitar in Chuck Berry red.

So, a bunch of smaller gifts then. Only there’s this little _idea_ digging into the back of his mind that if he was meant to win six hundred dollars he should be spending the whole goddamn thing, damn it, or else it should just be going to his medical bills after all.

_It’s yours. Buy something just for you._ Only he wouldn’t even know where to start, can’t think of a damn thing he’d even _like_ , let alone want. Fred remembers his own dad on Christmas morning, opening one gift for every four or five that the kids burned through, always thanking them profusely for the socks or neckties he opened but never quite as happy as he was when he was watching one of his kids tear into a gift of their own. That no matter how they wheedled and cajoled him he always asked for the same three things: a pair of socks, a new comb, and a paperback book. At the time, he’d never understood the drag of adulthood, how anyone could be happy with such mediocre gifts. Now he got it. The day was the gift. The kids were the gift. Their happiness was the gift.

How does he make Archie happy without hope, without a mother, and with only the two of them for Christmas?

He stops in the middle of the sidewalk, overcome by the total, stupid, hopelessness of it. $600 out of nowhere and he couldn’t even bother to be happy about it. Because at the end of the day, $600 wouldn’t help anything that mattered. $600 didn’t bring Mary back. It didn’t get FP out of jail, and it didn’t help his company any. It didn’t take that haunted look out of Archie’s eyes, or put Jughead’s home life back together. It wouldn’t make his son five years old again and safe. It wouldn’t make the nightmares stop. It wouldn’t even heal his leg up enough for them to go out in the yard and play snow baseball, Archie pitching snowballs and Fred batting them into powdery nothing, both of them laughing like idiots over it. Another holiday tradition down the drain.

Well, it _would_ make the tiniest dent in his medical bills. Or his company debt. But then it would be gone, just like that, out of his fingers, and he’d just be sunk in the red again. Getting rid of it via anonymous donation posed the same problem, and if the things Alice posted on Facebook were to be believed, all modern charities were big scams anyway. Unless Mary had opted out since they’d split, a whole whopping $50 still went out in their name to the Humane Society every year: he had the Christmas tags they sent him to prove it. Fred had already written checks to the soup kitchen and the Children’s Aid this year. Which left -

His alma mater? The Riverdale High Bulldogs were sponsored by Rick Mantle’s bottomless wallet this year, and they needed an extra six hundred like they needed a hole in the head. Maybe he’d gift it to Weatherbee privately - he and Archie had probably incurred over $600 in medical bills for him in their time there - but if this was to be anyone’s gift, Weatherbee wasn’t on the top of his list. Their church? He hadn’t been since last Christmas, but maybe God would count it as penance for all the times he and FP (or he and Hermione, wow, he was on his way to eternal damnation already, wasn’t he?) had fooled around in the pews.

Okay, forget the donation. Pass it on to someone less fortunate. Wasn’t that what you were supposed to do with miracles like this? The next homeless person he saw he’d pass it over, that’s all.

_No_ , a tough little voice in him speaks up stubbornly. $600 didn’t appear out of nowhere a week before Christmas unless it was for a reason. _That’s my money. Mine and Archie’s._

_Well, all right_ , says the other voice, rationally. _What do you and Archie need?_

_Therapy_ , he thinks immediately, and then laughs, surprised by the punchline of a joke he hadn’t known he was capable of making. All right, then, that’s what it would be. Not all for him, because he’d go crazy with guilt over it, but he’d buy Archie a couple more sessions with the doctor he liked and then find someone for himself.

But what then? What happened after they wore through whatever six hundred dollars got you? Therapy didn’t come cheap, even subsidized by insurance - and you had shit benefits when you owned your own company. You wouldn’t have to own it alone if you hadn’t fired FP, but if you hadn’t fired FP, you wouldn’t have a company. See the problem?

New plan. $600 might be just enough to bribe his way into FP’s holding cell and have enough left over for a sprig of mistletoe. He could waltz in there on Christmas morning and give him the most expensive kiss of his life. The fantasy is so ridiculous that he has to hide a laugh, ducking his chin into his scarf to hide it, and yet the vision comes to him in full colour, almost worth considering just for the look on FP’s face, the total, stupid, irresponsibility of it all.

God, what _does_ he do with it? Send it to Mary in bills? The most passive aggressive gesture he can muster up? _Since you didn’t take enough from me the first time._ At least he’d be rid of it. It wasn’t even his money, not really. Wasn’t anyone’s money yet, was just sitting there in his pocket: three little cherries in a row.

No, he was being ridiculous. Archie, of course. It would go to Archie.

The question was what. He turns and walks slowly down the row of shops, pausing every so often to look in the lighted windows. Ski poles. No, they couldn’t afford the trip to use them. Snowshoes. Riverdale hardly got enough snow for it, and without a second pair for a friend, tromping through snowdrifts would be a solitary activity. A snow saucer. They had plenty of those, the crown jewels of Christmases gone by. One more would topple the precarious pile of them in the garage.

Okay, think bigger. A car. He and FP had bought the Shaggin’ Wagon (god, how that name haunted him) for less than half of what his three cherries were worth. Fixing it up would take the rest (maybe more) but that was something they could do together. Or Archie with Betty, if they were on speaking terms (it was getting hard to keep track). That was a gift a sixteen year old boy needed. Freedom and the open road. Something red. Something with character. He’d be buying himself three years of being pestered for gas money, but wasn’t that what having a kid was all about? Archie would have to take his driver’s test, first, anyway, they’d been putting it off -

Only hell, you had to pay to take your driver’s test, didn’t you? Anything he had had put aside for expenses like that was wiped out after the hospital. So maybe that was what this was for. Not having to worry about paying for a driver’s test (or paying over again, if Archie took after him and blew the first shot.) It doesn’t satisfy him, though. You couldn’t wrap that up and put it under a tree.

“I wish I’d never won this stupid thing,” he says out loud, but he knows he’s lying. He likes having it. It makes him feel special. He touches his pocket reverently with his gloved hand, feeling the shape of the card through the fabric. Maybe this is how people get addicted to gambling, only he already knows he never wants to buy another scratch card again. You don’t ever get this lucky more than once.

Fred takes it out again and looks at it, almost certain that the three cherries would be gone, that he’d have read it wrong somehow the first time, but it’s still there: his one fucking blessing in a winter of bad news. Two hundred more of them and he could pay his medical bills.

He goes back to the corner mart where he’d bought the first scratch ticket, and cashes it out. The sallow-faced thirty-year-old behind the counter looks staggeringly impressed. He has to call the manager over to cash him out, because it’s more than they keep in the till. Fred glances at the row of lotto cards above the cash and remembers he’d bought this one for Archie’s stocking.

“Give me another one,” he says, and the manager looks both delighted and judgemental.

“Feel like your luck will hold?” she asks, fingers creeping toward one of the big ones, the ones crinkly with silver foil. He knows what she’s thinking - that the odds of him getting another win on this are almost zero: if not mathematically, then by the karmic laws of the universe that rarely deal out more than one bright spot at a time. He could explain to her that it’s for his kid’s Christmas stocking, but it seems like too much work to, and he doesn’t think she’d believe it. Fred lets her ring him up in silence.

If there was ever a time to start gambling, maybe it was now. If he wasted the six hundred on a roulette table, at least it would be out of his pocket. Or he could triple his money and take Archie on vacation after all. Only the nearest casino is all the way on the other side of Greendale, and that was quite a trek for someone who can’t walk straight without a crutch or sit down without wincing. The casino is also a loud place for someone who still cringes at the telephone.

And Fred doesn’t even know how to gamble.

He could buy his mom something nice, but she’d react as Archie would: annoyance, and then guilt. The point of gift-giving wasn’t to upset your recipient. He wishes he had the scratch card still, unspoiled - he’d give it to one of Jughead’s new friends, one of those Southside kids with thin arms and thin jackets and thin spirits. It would be organic, then, a stroke of luck. Something exciting and new and their own. But even desperate kids didn’t want charity for Christmas. Not even six hundred dollars of it.

How much was six hundred dollars really? That was one rent cheque on your shitty first apartment. That was half of something going wrong with your car. He holds the useless Christmas gift from nowhere in his hands and tries with all his might to want it, but all he gets is a sudden worry that he’s going to drop it and it’s going to fly off down the street in the wind. Fred shoves the envelope deep down back in his pocket and keeps walking.

His bad leg is screaming from the cold by the time he gets to the end of the row of shops. He’s walked seven blocks without realizing it. The Christmas speakers below the lightposts are piping _Pretty Paper_ out onto the street, the world’s saddest Christmas song. Fred lingers under one and tries not to cry a little bit.

Roy Orbison singing for the lonely, he thinks. _That’s me._

He turns toward the electronics store, which is probably a bad place to go when he’s trying to keep tears down. Fred finds electronics stores oblique, frustrating, and utterly terrifying. But it’s the closest lighted window, and he’s freezing. Besides, he’d overheard Archie telling Betty that he was saving up for some kind of electronic thingamabob or another. The alternative is going back to cry in his car with six hundred dollars in an envelope and nothing at all in his heart.

He gets greeted like a king when he walks in the door, and for a moment he thinks he must have won something. Then he realizes that the employees have just crossed the holiday threshold from busy to manic. Fred mumbles that he’s just browsing and keeps to the margins of the store.

He feels a bit like he’s on a spaceship. Fred lets himself wander, averting his gaze from employees and conscientiously not touching things. He wonders if he should be alarmed that he recognizes absolutely nothing on these shelves. Back in the old days, electronics stores used to sell things like blank CDs and computer mouses. You could have handed him an alien robot alongside one of these gizmos, and he wouldn’t have known which was which.

When he finally sees something he recognizes, his heart gives an abrupt leap of thankfulness, and he scoops it up off the shelf. He lifts it up to eye level: a tiny piano keyboard with a miniscule, fat length of white wire sticking out of one end. Fred has no idea how or where you’re supposed to plug it in, but at least the general design is familiar. Hit keys. Make music. Boom. He presses middle C, but no sound comes out. Maybe it needs batteries.

“What the heck is this for?,” he says out loud, and the nearest twenty-something in a uniform shirt swoops in on him with almost frightening enthusiasm.

“It’s a USB keyboard,” the curly-haired youth enthuses, pulling it delightedly out of Fred’s hands like it’s a football instead of an expensive musical instrument. “You can plug it into your tablet, laptop, wifi-enabled smart device, and if you’ve got the software, you can record music right from your desk.”

“There’s only one octave,” says Fred, confused. “Wait, my what?”

“Tablet?” asks the boy.

“What the heck is that?” asks Fred again, and the boy shares a quick, knowing grin with a younger female employee to his right. Fred’s chest tightens up a little bit. He doesn’t want them to think he’s _that_ stupid.

“That’s these,” she says, and indicates a table of rectangle-shaped things with screens. Fred lights up when he recognizes them, excited. “Hey, my son wants that!”

They _really_ exchange a look this time, and the knowledge that they’ve probably heard that exact phrase a thousand times from every clueless middle-aged parent that’s wandered into the shop this holiday season does little to take away Fred’s twinge of embarrassment.

“Okay, look, you two,” he says. “I may not know what a tablet is, but I know what a keyboard is, and I’ve been putting car engines together since before you were born. So-”

He stops, a sudden grin spreading across his face. There’s something growing in pressure in his chest, and it’s not crying this time, it’s laughter. A real laugh.

“Wow, I sounded like my dad for a second there,” he says. “My son’s going to be a musician. What does he need? I have six hundred dollars, but I can spend a little bit more. It’s Christmas.”


	7. since we've no place to go

**december 22**

Ace lets him eat dinner in bed, which is cool, even if it’s just bread with peanut butter and creamed corn. Neither of which Sweet Pea is really in the mood for.

The thing is, Sweet Pea has been shivering since he woke up. The shivering makes his body hurt: his joints are too stiff to move. Whenever he starts coughing it takes him a long time to stop. His fingers feel swollen and frozen solid. He had texted Fangs early that morning to tell him that he wouldn’t be coming to school, and in his head he had wondered if maybe Fangs would come visit him. Only that was a stupid thought, because Fangs had school too, and Fangs had shot back only a ‘ _that sucks_ ’ and then a ‘ _see you at Christmas_ ’.

 _If I survive,_ thinks Sweet Pea, nursing a nosebleed with a handful of crumpled up tissues. _If I survive._

“I came by at lunch, but you were sleeping,” says Ace. He’s changing out of his work clothes and into a warmer sweater and jeans before piling his jacket and scarf back on. “I didn’t want to wake you up.”

Ace says nothing about the school he’d missed. Maybe Ace figures that the last day before Christmas vacation wasn’t that important after all. Or maybe he just doesn’t want to think about it. Ace is watching him, so Sweet Pea takes an experimental bite out of his bread. It tastes like plaster in his mouth, but he tries to swallow. Tries not to gag when it goes down wrong.

“We’re getting out of here for tonight,” Ace is saying. “I don’t know where, but we’re not staying here. Not when you’re sick. This stupid place probably made you sick.”

“How about Julian’s?” says Sweet Pea. He picks at the food on his plate. Tries lifting the fork to his mouth and then lets it back down. His stomach is starting to feel bad, and he doesn’t like looking at the corn.

Ace looks miserable. “I don’t want you sleeping on the floor. And he’s in enough shit.”

Julian is one of the older kids, going on twenty-two, like Ace. His mother is very sick, hospital sick, the kind you don’t always recover from. There’s room in the trailer because she doesn’t come home from the hospital anymore. Sometimes Ace takes money out his paycheck and gives it to Julian, and they eat a lot of Chef Boyardee those weeks. But Ace never talks about it. It’s just something you do. Sweet Pea thinks that’s something the serpents have that so-called real families never would.

Ace is on the phone now, calling friends to see if they’ll let him stay. He is careful about it. Most of the serpents are in situations similar to theirs. And you don’t want to call in a favour too many times. Sweet Pea closes his eyes against the pillow and listens to his brothers voice. Ace is saying _please_ , and _just for the night_. A lot of people are turning him down.

 _No room at the inn_ , thinks Sweet Pea deliriously, and wonders where the hell he’s heard that before. Then he realizes it was Jones. He hates that he listens when Jones talks. That was Jones and Toni, doing some stupid back-and-forth over the cafeteria lunch. Like the three fucking stooges. Only two of them. The only two smart enough to get their damn jokes.

All the other serpents listened to Jones. Maybe because he was FP’s kid, or maybe just because they were shit judges of character. Like that time Ricky’s truck had broken down, and Jones had had the brilliant idea to haul it all the way to the fucking Northside -

Sweet Pea suddenly has a stupid idea. One that he definitely never would have entertained if Ace didn’t look so fucking scared and his body wasn’t so cold and he didn’t have a gross fistful of bloody tissues in his hand. Ace finishes talking to whoever he’s on the line with and hangs up.

“Jones knows a guy,” says Sweet Pea, before he can think properly about the words coming out of his mouth. “He let him crash while his dad was drying up.”

Ace relaxes like a marionette whose strings have been cut. The arm holding the phone sags nervelessly down in a graceful arc. The tension falls out of his shoulders and tumbles down around his knees. They have a home for tonight. With heat. “Where does he live?”

Sweet Pea takes in a deep breath, but can’t see a way around it. “Elm Street. On the Northside.”

“A Northsider?” Ace’s mouth drops open, his eyes narrowed to slits. “Are you fucking kidding me, Sweet Pea?”

Sweet Pea wishes he could answer the same question. “FP trusts him. They’re tight.”

Ace blinks, looking like he can’t decide whether to believe him or not. FP’s trust was a big deal. That had weight. “You sure?”

“Yeah.” Sweet Pea touches his heart with two fingers, their secret promise signal from when they were kids. “It’s safe.”

Ace still looks wary, and Sweet Pea knows that if he wasn’t sick like this his brother wouldn’t even think about it. “If FP trusts him that’s one thing, I guess. And we’re desperate. Who is he?”

“I just told you,” says Sweet Pea, coughing. “FP’s friend. Fred something.”

Sudden understanding dawns in his brother’s eyes. Ace has been a serpent since he was twelve years old: of course he recognizes the name. Sweet Pea isn’t sure why he’d thought he wouldn’t. Everyone knows that there’s a guy on the Northside named Fred that’s under Serpent protection. FP’s orders. You don’t sell to him, you don’t fuck with him, you don’t even look at him. Or his wife, or his kid, or his house. He’s family, says FP, and if there’s one thing the serpents understand, it’s family.

FP’s in prison now, so maybe the rules don’t apply. But he’s pretty sure no one’s fucked with Fred Andrews. Not since he fixed Ricky’s truck, anyway.

“Jones knows that guy?” says Ace, like he’s considering it. “FP’s friend?”

Sweet Pea starts to think this is a mistake. Ace doesn’t want to go because Fred’s a Northsider. That part is the least of Sweet Pea’s problems. Sweet Pea doesn’t want to go because he knows Fred is gay.

Or, bisexual, rather - Toni’s _look-it-up-sometime_ word. Fucked around with FP in high school, and then married a girl. His kid is that nutjob Red Circle northsider - the one who made that stupid viral video and then went all over the Southside waving a gun. The one Jones won’t stop making excuses for. (Which, well, if Jones wasn’t wholly straight, maybe meant something. But who fucking knew around here. Not Sweet Pea, that was for sure. Sweet Pea didn’t know shit.)

It’s his fault in the first place, is the thing. He’d gone along with everyone when they’d needed Ricky’s truck fixed. And then he’d gone back to Fred ( _Call-Me-Fred_ , he called him in his head, because that was the first thing Fred had said to him) because Jones said he was good to talk to about confusing stuff. Pretending like he had a bone to pick with Jones and was looking everywhere for him just so he’d get invited in. He had a bad feeling Mr. Call-Me-Fred could see through his game in a second, but was too polite to say anything about it.

He had said something to him about FP. Something Sweet Pea kept thinking about. _We’re like stars orbiting each other_ , he had said. _Have you ever felt like that with a person?_

No, Sweet Pea had told him. No, he hadn’t.

He had told Fred that sometimes Fangs’ hands bothered him. That sometimes he thought too long about the time he had taught Fangs to ride a motorcycle - Fangs’ arms curled around his midsection and his chin pressed into his back. About how his brother talked about people who liked that kind of stuff. And then he had panicked and clammed up, because who the fuck was he to talk about his brother to some rich Northside asshole? Someone who would probably never know what Ace went through in a day, or that Ace had taught him to throw a softball and ride a bike and was the best person Sweet Pea would ever know. How sweet Ace was with Becky, and how Sweet Pea watched them sometimes and thought maybe something like that was all he wanted in the whole wide world.

Fred had promised not to tell anyone. But could you really trust Northsiders? Sweet Pea had spent a night in jail thanks to them. Fangs hadn’t even been there to make it cool - he’d been cutting class when the school had been raided. Sweet Pea had had to sit there alone when he should have been in math class.

Sweet Pea decided to carefully omit the fact that Fred used to be FP’s boyfriend. Tells Ace it’ll be okay. There’s nothing else to do, anyways. The heat is off, and the light is stealing out of the sky. It’s only going to get colder.

They pack up pyjamas and deodorant and shit in Sweet Pea’s bookbag. Sweet Pea is starting to feel sicker and sicker. Carrying the bag out to the car makes his head spin. It feels like it weighs thirty thousand pounds.

Ace drives. Sweet Pea rests his head against the window, the bag between his legs, and tries to soothe the heat in his forehead. He clutches his tissues in his hand, but doesn’t use them. It’s snowing very lightly, and the Christmas lights outside the window blur into a multicoloured stream. Sweet Pea wants to fall asleep, but Ace doesn’t know where the house is. Sweet Pea has to tell him where to turn.

There are Christmas lights up all down Elm Street, all over the big, fancy houses and massive, snowblow driveways. It’s dark now, and the whole thing looks like a picture. Like a Christmas card. Sweet Pea’s never got a Christmas card in the mail, but he knows the theory. Once upon a time, they used to give them out at the trailer park. Merry fucking Christmas. Happy holidays.

Sweet Pea is starting to hate the holidays.

His legs almost cave under him when he gets out of the truck. Ace lunges and catches him, holds him long enough for Sweet Pea to get back upright. The yellow house is very quiet. Two of the windows have lights in them, calm and golden behind nondescript curtains. There’s a big, pine-smelling wreath on the door. The driveway has been messily shovelled, and the shovel is leaning up against the side of the house. The snowflakes falling have frosted it in white.

“Bell or knock?” asks Ace. He sounds nervous. He has an arm wrapped around Sweet Pea to keep him upright.

Sweet Pea doesn’t give a shit. “Bell.”

Ace presses it. They listen to it echo through the house.

“No one’s coming,” says Ace.

Sweet Pea coughs, feels like he’s going to bring his lungs up. “Wait.”

The porch light is on, the light fixture piled with ice, keeping the snow around their feet lit up in gold. This snow is the crunchy kind, the kind you can hear as well as see. Fred Andrews’ Christmas lights are the old-fashioned kind: incandescent bulbs instead of LEDs. The colours they make on the snow are the right ones. If Sweet Pea wasn’t dying, he might think they look nice. Like a movie. Not that he cared. It was Jones that liked movies.

The door cracks open, the chain halting it from swinging more than a few inches into the house. It’s a gold chain, something pretty. Like Christmas. _Keep out_ , it says. _Stay out there. I’ll stay in here._ A single dark eye looks out at them.

 _He won’t let us in_ , thinks Sweet Pea, and for an instant is sure of it. Everyone up here thought it was the Serpents who were shooting people. They’re in their jackets. FP’s boyfriend or not, Fred wouldn’t let two of them in his yellow house. Not at night. Not at Christmas. He’s getting some warmth out through the crack in the door, and he shifts on his feet, sniffling. He’d left his tissues in the car.

“Sweet Pea,” says Fred, recognizing him. “You’re one of Jughead’s friends.”

“I’m Ace,” says Sweet Pea’s brother, his voice a lot softer and more worried than Sweet Pea’s used to hearing it. The arm around Sweet Pea gets tighter. His head swims. “I’m his brother. He’s sick. Can we come in?”

Sweet Pea’s fears end up being pointless, because for someone who had just survived being shot, Fred Andrews ends up not having a lot of self-preservation in him. The door closes and the chain comes off right away. If they’d been meaning to knock over the guy and ransack his house, it would have been too easy. Sweet Pea wonders if all Northsiders are this trusting. Surely not when it comes to gang members showing up at their door. Then again, he probably does look sick. He can actually _feel_ the heat in his face, throbbing like a heartbeat. Every time he swallows it’s like swallowing knives.

“I’m Fred,” says Call-Me-Fred, ushering them into the front hall. “Come on in. Sit down.”

There’s a big tree in the room. Sweet Pea had forgotten, for a moment, about Christmas trees. He and Ace usually didn’t get one until closer to the holiday, because it was hard for Ace to get time off work. Even when he came home he was exhausted, and you couldn’t carry a tree home on a motorbike. You had to walk. But they had a truck now. Maybe they could have a tree.

Ace helps him sit down on the couch, on the side closest to the tree. Sweet Pea feels its warmth on the side of his cheek, dazzling, like diamonds. It feels sharp and hot.

Fred asks him something, but all his senses are taken up by the tree and Sweet Pea hears none of it. His ears are plugged and frozen. Mr. Call-Me-Fred’s hands are very cool on Sweet Pea’s forehead and the sides of his face. He feels the heat and clucks his tongue softly at it.

Sweet Pea has never had a dad. He’s only had stories about dads. He thinks if they were loud and angry like Julian’s dad or Jughead’s dad he’d rather not. But if they were gentle like this, he might want one.

That thought feels disloyal. He shouldn’t need a dad. He has Ace. And Sweet Pea’s almost seventeen. Seventeen is old enough not to need a dad. Dads when you were seventeen were an inconvenience, a bore. Not something to be hoped for.

Ace is talking now, something about his fever, the heater in their apartment being broken, but Sweet Pea’s ears are throbbing and he still can’t hear. Fred goes away for a second and comes back with a glass thermometer. Sweet Pea lets him put it in his mouth under his tongue and pretends he’s not thinking about how that crazy red circle guy is Fred’s son and has probably held this nasty thing in his mouth. If he gets sicker because he has Northside germs in him, he’ll be pissed. Real pissed.

Real fucking pissed.

Fred takes the thermometer out of his mouth and reads it. He clucks his tongue again, but less seriously this time. “Not too bad,” he says to Ace, and then looks at Sweet Pea so he’ll know he’s talking to him too. “I’ve seen worse. You should be just fine.”

Sweet Pea can slowly feel feeling coming back into his toes. He’d forgotten how cold he was. Call-Me-Fred suddenly has a whole fucking stethoscope out like a goddamn doctor or something. He breathes on the metal part and then tucks the little earpieces into his ears.

“Are you okay with this?” Fred asks.

Ace is hovering, and Sweet Pea is too tired to argue. “Yeah,” he rasps, and Fred gently tucks it against his chest, through his t-shirt. Listens. Sweet Pea wants to ask him who the hell he thinks he is, if he’s ever been to goddamn medical school or what, but refrains.

“Cough for me, Sweet Pea.”

Sweet Pea’s pretty sure Fred doesn’t want that to happen, because the last time he coughed it took him almost ten minutes to stop, but he huffs out a raspy cough that comes from deep down in him and burns his throat like oil. Fred frowns in sympathy. “Your lungs are okay,” he says, “But that’s a nasty cough you’ve got.”

 _Tell me about it_ , thinks Sweet Pea, almost drowsily. Warmth after so much cold is making him tired, his fingers prickling like they’re being stuck with needles. _Tell me the fuck about it._ He wonders where that Archie kid is. Fuck him, if he’s around.

Fred’s talking to Ace again. “I have some Tylenol Flu,” he’s saying. “He can take a couple and lie down upstairs. It should knock the fever out.”

Sweet Pea stares at the Christmas tree. All those lights. He remembers another one of Miss Smitt’s stupid writing prompts: _write about the moment your protagonist finds light in the darkness._ Light in the goddamn fucking darkness. What a laugh. He had seen Jones scribbling away over that one, just about pissing himself in his excitement. Jones never had to worry about getting his b’s and d’s mixed up. Sweet Pea had decided then and there that what Jones really needed for Christmas was a good kick in the teeth.

Sweet Pea had drawn a dick on the paper, but then even that had seemed too mean, so he’d balled it all up and thrown it in the trash. He doesn’t see what he’s trying to graduate for, anyways. Tons of guys he knows hadn’t graduated high school. Ace hadn’t graduated high school, and he was doing okay. Well, if you called a shit job and a shitter apartment that didn’t even having working heating okay. Which, maybe he didn’t, come to think of it.

“Sweet Pea, c’mon,” says Ace, and Sweet Pea realizes his brother’s trying to get him to stand up. “Come on upstairs.”

Sweet Pea lets Ace guide him up the staircase and down the unfamiliar hallway, his mind feeling foggy and disconnected. He’s given two little pills with a glass of water and a nice hot water bottle wrapped in a towel. Sweet Pea’s never had a hot water bottle given to him before. It makes him feel safe and warm.

“Have you two had anything to eat?” Fred is asking. “I can make soup.”

“He had something before we came over,” Sweet Pea hears Ace reply. To Sweet Pea’s ears he sounds like he is speaking from the end of a tunnel. “He says his stomach doesn’t feel good.”

“How about you?” Fred says, but Sweet Pea doesn’t hear the answer. He is stumbling into the doorframe of the guest room. Someone - either his brother or Fred, takes his shoulder and straightens him out.

“Here you go,” says Fred softly when they lead him to the bed. The room is pretty boring looking, one big bed and a couple bookshelves. Sweet Pea unlaces his shoes and crawls under the covers, hot water bottle wrapped up in his arms.

“Hey,” says Fred. “Let me get you something else to wear. Don’t wear your jacket to bed.”

“I’ve got something,” says Ace quickly, unbuckling the backpack. “Sweet Pea, c’mere.”

Fred goes out into the hallway as Ace dresses him, and Sweet Pea feels like a little kid again. His arms ache when the jacket comes off.

“You guys okay?” Fred asks through the closed door. Nosy asshole. Northsiders always had a million and one questions. Like Jones. _So do you think anyone in the Serpents might be the shooter? Why should I sit with you guys at lunch? Why do I have to do the initiation? Where are the Southside High bathrooms?_ Asshole. None of his business, that’s where. Piss your pants and learn something about the world.

“Yeah,” says Ace and pushes gently on Sweet Pea’s chest until he lies down. The bed is as soft as a hotel bed. He thinks about Julian, sleeping on a pull-out couch ever since he was born, while that jerk Archie had a whole room and a whole bed that no one ever slept in. Just for looks. For _guests_. Like someone would ever want to _visit_ a trigger-happy high schooler and his gay podunk dad.

Fred comes back in and gives him a box of tissues. “We passed the bathroom,” he says, “it’s two doors down on your left. We’ll be right downstairs if you need something.”

“Take it easy, Sweet Pea,” says Ace softly and leaves the door open a crack.

Sweet Pea lets the comforter settle like snow over his body. The hot water bottle makes a warm, spreading safety crawl out from his midsection and into his numb hands. A wave of revulsion grips him, and he wants to throw the stupid thing away from him for all that it’s worth. Get up and storm out of the house. He hates being here. He hates this neighbourhood, and he hates this guy. Ace is not a hateful person, but Sweet Pea has hate in him: as thick and as real as ribbon. He’s disgusted by this bed. He’s disgusted by this rich guy Fred Andrews, and he’s disgusted by his body. He must have been a crazy person to come here.

But he doesn’t get up. He lies in the dark, fuming with anger at first, and then letting the tiredness replace it. Lets the hate sap out of him with the last of his strength, forgets his name, forgets everything. Closes his eyes finally and lets everything go away.

“Hey,” says Ace softly when he crawls into bed with him later. Sweet Pea wakes up at the sound of his brother’s voice, as abruptly as if an alarm had rung. “How’re you feeling?”

“Okay,” whispers Sweet Pea. “What’d he say to you?”

“Says we can stay as long as we want. I’m gonna go to work for five, but you can stay here and sleep. He won’t wake you.” Ace reaches over and musses Sweet Pea’s hair up. Sweet Pea doesn’t have the energy to get pissed. All his hair gel is frozen at home, anyway. “Then you can get better quicker, and we’ll get out of here. Becky’ll be home tomorrow.”

Sweet Pea wants to be asleep again, but he wants Ace to talk to him more. “Did you find out why FP’s protecting him? This guy save his life or something?”

Ace makes a _hm_ noise. “They were _lovers_ , if you can dig it. He was never one of us, either, he grew up on the Northside. Can you imagine that being you?”

 _Lovers._ Sweet Pea doesn’t think he’s ever heard his brother use that word. Definitely not about two boys. It kind of scares the shit out of him, thinking about him and Fangs ever being that way. Ever calling Fangs his _lover_.

“Imagine what?” he asks, carefully nonchalant, like his heart isn’t beating out a tango at double speed. “Being gay?”

“No, gooseass, falling in love with someone on the Northside.” Ace’s voice is muffled slightly from the pillow: he rolls over and punches his fist into it. “Sounds like a fucking nightmare. I’m glad Becky’s not-”

“You mean the whole time you were talking to him you weren’t thinking about FP’s cock in his mouth?”

Ace looks shocked. “Jesus Christ, Sweet Pea, the guy’s sticking his neck out for us. You wanna call him a faggot a bit louder? In his own house? _Chee_ -rist.” Ace purses his lips at him. “Besides, I don’t think about FP’s sex life. Ever.”

Ace flops over on his side and Sweet Pea knows he should shut up, but he can’t keep his stupid mouth from talking. “It doesn’t piss you off none?”

“I don’t hate gay people, Sweet Pea. I don’t get it, but I don’t hate em. Okay? So chill the fuck out.”

Sweet Pea _chills_. He knows Ace has no idea what’s going on in his head, no idea how Fangs’ hands make him feel, but he still doesn’t like hearing him talk about Fred and FP. It’s too close to the truth. Too intimate with reason for his liking.

Ace rolls over and grabs his hand, warm from the hot water bottle. “Hey,” he says softly. “We’re gonna be okay, you know that? This guy’s safe. I wouldn’t let you stay here if he wasn’t.”

“I know,” says Sweet Pea. Ace squeezes his hand tight and then releases him.

“Hey Sweet Pea?” he asks, after a minute has gone by. Sweet Pea rolls over to show he’s listening. Ace swallows.

“I’m really sorry. I wish I could take better care of you. It’s just—” He pauses, and the weight of the world seems to settle on that pause, pressing in so that it’s almost crushing them. His voice is breathless when he speaks again, too close to fear. “—No one ever told me how to do this either.”

It’s plaintive, and Sweet Pea doesn’t like it. Likes his brother better when he’s self-assured and cocky, almost to a fault. He doesn’t answer, hoping Ace will think he’s asleep and shut up. Hoping his brother will stop sounding like a little kid who’s been hit for the first time and doesn’t think he deserves it.

“I know you’re awake, asshole,” says Ace in his normal voice, and then Sweet Pea feels better, just a little bit. Ace ruffles his hair up one last time. “Just go to sleep, get better. I’m going to get us out of this mess, I swear.”

“I know,” says Sweet Pea, voice hoarse, tasting blood from his sore throat. “I know you will.”


	8. bless all the dear children in thy tender care

**december 23**

Sweet Pea wakes up around four in the morning, as Fred’s shaking his brother quietly awake. Ace gets up quickly and smoothly, trying not to wake him. Sweet Pea keeps his eyes shut so he’ll think he was successful.

Squinting briefly through his closed eyelids he can just see the two of them standing up together, the low murmur of their voices. Fred is asking Ace if he needs a ride. Ace is saying no, he has a car. The door clicks shut and the room is dim again.

 _Don’t go_ , he thinks faintly, fingers probing for the hot water bottle, now cool. Stupid thought. Ace needed to go. They needed the money.

When he comes to a second time the sun is up. The blinds are drawn so that it only creeps around the edges of the windowpane, leaving a glowing rectangle on the far wall. Sweet Pea feels shaky and not very good. His head is weak and aching and he can feel his stomach sitting in his midsection like a hard, palpable brick. His throat doesn’t hurt quite as much, but his stomach feels all kinds of wrong.

Sweet Pea closes his eyes. He thinks about pressing a hand against his stomach and then thinks it might make it worse. Better not to move. Better to pray for a quick death. He swallows, and it’s good that his throat feels less raw because his mouth is full of spit and he has to do it again. Either he’s forgotten about the stuffiness of his head and the hot feeling in his skin or it’s gone, because all he can feel now is this shakiness inside. He tries to remember what he’d eaten last, finds himself thinking about creamed corn, and tries to push the image firmly away.

Hot spit is rising up into his mouth again, but he thinks it's fine. If he lies very still and doesn’t think about corn and very slowly curls his hands into fists, he feels better. If he lies very still and doesn’t even breathe, doesn’t open his eyes, just lays under the too-heavy duvet and doesn’t think about the horrible cramp building up in his stomach -

He swallows too fast the next time and then he _knows_ , scrambles out from under the duvet because he is _not_ going to throw up in this bed, not here, not now. The cooler air is horrible on his sweat-damp skin but he ignores it, slams the door open and sprints at full tilt toward the bathroom.  

Sweet Pea drops to his knees on the fluffy bath mat, the kind cut neatly into a U to fit around the bottom of the toilet, throws the toilet seat up with one shaking hand, thinking desperately _this isn’t happening this isn’t happening this isn’t happening -_

A wave of nausea hits him and he leans forward over the toilet bowl, the tight cramp in his midsection loosening as he forcefully expels the contents of his stomach. The smell and sight of it (creamed corn, definitely) is enough to send him gagging again, his mouth flooded with saliva as he grips the edges of the toilet bowl and heaves a second time. More bile comes up, hot and sour in his mouth. His hands are slick with sweat, his knuckles pale against the porcelain.

He gasps over the toilet bowl, his bangs hanging down into his face, ignoring the quiet knock at the bathroom door. Sweet Pea waits anxiously for another round of heaving but his stomach seems to have settled at last. At least he can no longer feel it sitting there inside him. His head is pounding again, worse than ever.

“Sweet Pea?” Fred’s voice. “Can I come in?”

“It’s open.”

Fred sets the glass of water he’s carrying down right away and kneels beside Sweet Pea, ignoring the fact that he probably reeks of sweat and puke. “Poor guy,” he murmurs, as if Sweet Pea isn’t 6’2” and scarier than him. He smooths the sweaty hair out of Sweet Pea’s eyes as his other hand moves to rub a half-circle into his back.

“Sorry,” Sweet Pea apologizes thickly.

“Don’t be sorry.” Fred’s hand moves soothingly up and down his spine in long strokes. “I’m impressed you made it to the toilet. Archie’s never managed that.”

Sweet Pea thinks Archie sounds like an ungrateful little snot of a kid, and he tells Fred that. The corner of Fred’s mouth twitches absently and he lays the back of his hand against Sweet Pea’s forehead.

“You’re not as warm. Have a sip of this for me.”

Sweet Pea gulps greedily from the glass of water, but Fred shakes his head at him. “Just sip.” He keeps rubbing circles at the back of Sweet Pea’s neck. “How are you feeling? Do you think you’re done throwing up?”

Sweet Pea nods. The shaky feeling inside him has left, and he’s back to being tired and dizzy, but not nauseous. Fred flushes the toilet and wipes his face off with the cloth, and then his mouth. He does it as purposefully as if he’s wiped a million faces like this, and Sweet Pea can’t help the relieved feeling that he’s in experienced hands. It reminds him of his mom, not an eighteen-year-old Ace fumbling around trying to play parent and pass grade twelve at the same time. The thought strikes him immediately again as disloyal, and he tries to crush it down.

Sweet Pea closes his eyes and lets the bathroom fold around him, leaning into the red light he can see through his eyelids. He feels himself being steadied and pulled up against the broad warmth of Fred’s chest.

“C’mere.” Fred lifts him up under the armpits and gets him all the way to his feet. “Let’s get you a toothbrush, and then you can go back to bed.”

Sweet Pea watches in amazement as Fred opens the cupboard under the sink and takes out a brand new toothbrush, still in its package. Sweet Pea and Ace have to wait until they go to the dentist to get a new toothbrush. Fred opens it up and gives it to him, and then stands close by while Sweet Pea does a really shitty job of brushing his teeth. Sweet Pea can’t begrudge him for hovering because his legs still feel wobbly and he doesn’t trust them one bit.

 “That’s good enough,” says Fred reassuringly when Sweet Pea gives up and abandons the toothbrush on the side of the sink. “Here you go.” 

He hands him the rest of the water and Sweet Pea drinks it carefully. Fred helps him down the hall and back into the bed. Once Sweet Pea’s tucked in he smooths down the sides of the quilt and sits with him, dragging the wastebasket nearer to the bed as he does.

“Can you leave me alone?” asks Sweet Pea hoarsely. If Fred’s surprised or hurt, he doesn’t show it. Just rises from the bed and tucks Sweet Pea in a bit tighter.

“Holler if you need anything. I’ll be right downstairs.”

“Okay,” says Sweet Pea, mistrustful, and watches him go. He glances over the side of the bed at the empty wastebasket. Serves this guy right if he throws up everywhere. All over his big Northside house with the big ugly Christmas tree and the stairs. All over the Christmas quilt and the carpet and the bed and the shiny wrapped presents. All over everything nice.

Fangs drifts into his mind one more time, unbidden. After three more Christmases, Fangs would be too old to be a foster kid. Maybe Sweet Pea would have a job by then, and they could live together. A warm room like this one.

 _Don’t think about it._  

But he does think about it, in the dark of a Northside spare bedroom, where he doesn’t belong and where no one can see or hear him. He thinks about it tentatively, like probing a wound, touching the torn flesh with only the very tips of his fingers, then touching harder. If he tries not to think about it the way he tried not to think about the corn, it goes. But if he lets it in he can see it, small as a postage stamp in his mind’s eye. Him and Fangs as roommates, or maybe more than roommates, and a Christmas tree in the corner of their living room. One that was all their own, with their own decorations on it.

He falls asleep to the picture of it, as warm and as soft-looking as December snow.

12:18 says the digital clock when he wakes up again. Just past noon.

“How are you feeling?” Fred greets him when Sweet Pea comes downstairs. He’s sitting in the living room, surrounded by open shopping bags and half-wrapped presents. Sweet Pea draws closer, curious. “You look like you need a shower.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?,” asks Sweet Pea, and Fred laughs, and then looks apologetic. “I’m sorry. Would you like to take a shower? It’s no trouble.”

“I mean, I _guess_.” says Sweet Pea, and Fred smiles at him. Sweet Pea’s never had an adult smile at him when he’s being an asshole. The idea with adults was to drive them crazy by being as non-committal as possible. That’s why “ _whatever”_ and “ _I guess”_ were such winners. Only Fred doesn’t look mad, or even bothered. He gets up and dusts off his jeans.

“Let me show you where it is,” he says. “Then I’ll leave you alone.”

He leads him through the master bedroom, one that has far too many pictures of that Red Circle kid Archie in it. Sweet Pea turns one of the photo frames on the dresser face-down as he passes, just out of spite. The temptation to tell Fred Andrews that his dumb-as-shit son was waving a gun around the Southside - right in his face, in fact - comes back, but he doesn’t act on it. Christmas being a time for goodwill, and all that.

Fred gives him two more Tylenol and shows him how to turn the shower on and off.

“How long does it take to heat up?” asks Sweet Pea.

“Should be pretty instant. Give it a couple seconds.”

Pretty fucking instant. Meanwhile he and Ace were standing around for half an hour or more waiting for the water to go from freezing to lukewarm. Taking turns showering because there was only enough hot water for one of them. Sweet Pea gets angry. It wasn’t fair. None of it was fair. Fred Andrews played nice, but he still lived in a system that ate up the Southside and put it back in his pocket. Fred Andrews has probably never been without a shower in his life. Fred Andrews has probably never eaten creamed corn and peanut butter on bread and called it dinner. Fred Andrews’ bathroom is as white and as creamy-clean as snow.

He swallows his anger out of self-preservation rather than forgiveness. If he starts swinging at this guy on behalf of Julian, and Ace, and Fangs, he won’t get a shower. And Sweet Pea likes taking care of himself. His hair looks pretty damn good when it’s clean and gelled down.

Fred gets him two towels and goes back downstairs to wrap Christmas presents. Sweet Pea isn’t sure how many boxes he’d seen in there, but it was more than he’d ever had for Christmas in his whole life. When Sweet Pea was little, Ace would wrap all the pieces of his present separately so he’d have more to open. But even then, it wasn’t much. Always looked empty under their tree.

The anger comes up again, hot and rope-thick in his mouth, but he pushes it carefully away. Sweet Pea decides not to care about it. He gets in the shower and uses huge dollops of all the shampoos, just out of spite, and that makes him feel better, a bit. He feels best of all knowing that Archie doesn’t use this bathroom. Even the possibility of touching one of Archie’s pubic hairs with his toe makes him want to upchuck again.

He decides to take the longest shower he can, and see if the hot water runs out. Just to make Archie’s life a little shittier when he gets home. But when it’s been almost twenty minutes and the water’s still warm, he turns it off. No use wasting it.

He doesn’t think about Fangs while he’s in the shower, either. Not even a little bit.

Fred doesn’t have any hair gel, but there’s a comb on the counter that Archie probably hasn’t touched, so Sweet Pea combs his hair back with it. The house is warm enough that he can take his time getting dressed in the change of clothes he’d packed in his backpack. Fred’s seated at the kitchen island when he goes back downstairs, shifting through a stack of mail. A wrapped present is sitting by his elbow, the paper a glittery, iridescent gold.

Outside the kitchen window the sky is clear and blue. Other houses exhale big puffs of white smoke up from their chimneys. They look like clouds going up. Sweet Pea looks out there for awhile. He thinks the winter might not be so bad after all, as long as you were inside for it.

“How are you feeling?” asks Fred again, looking up from the mail.

“Better,” says Sweet Pea. Fred touches his forehead.

“You feel better. Still a little warm.” Sweet Pea watches as he turns his attention to the spool of ribbon in front of him, absently unwinding a length of it. “Your brother said he’d be home around four.”

“What did he say when you told him you were FP’s boyfriend?

Fred looks back up, surprised. “FP and I aren’t-”

Sweet Pea rolls his eyes, impatient. “I meant ex-boyfriend.”

Fred smiles at that. “I haven’t been ‘FP’s ex boyfriend’ in a long time.”

“Well, are you dating him now?”

“No." 

“Then you’re still his ex boyfriend.”

Fred smiles to himself and ties a bow onto the package. “I guess so.”

Sweet Pea wonders why people can’t just say whatever the hell they mean around here instead of talking in riddles. Cryptic fuck. He drops into a seat at the table and traces the edge of a placemat with his finger. He thinks about the last time he was here, and bites his lip, embarrassed. He wishes he hadn't said that thing about Fangs’ hands. Not out loud.

“Do you want something to eat?” Fred asks.

“No.” says Sweet Pea simply. He stares out the window at the snow. 

“My mom sent me some old pictures,” says Fred. “Do you want to see?”

 _No_ , he almost says again, but it sounds too mean. “Whatever,” he tries instead, and Fred smiles and pulls the chair out next to him.

“Come see.”

Sweet Pea huffs and gets up from the table. Fred has three polaroids set out in front of him. One is of him as a eight-year-old on hockey skates. The other two are of him and FP. Fred tells him the story behind it. This one year the girls that everyone expected them to go with had found other guys, and FP and Fred had gone together to the winter formal as a gag that wasn’t really a gag, only it was a threefold gag for people who knew and just some funny irony for people who didn’t. He looks at the pictures Fred shows him for a long while, both of them young and bright in colourful tuxedos, hands clasped, pretending to pretend. 

“Which one is you?” asks Sweet Pea, which makes Fred laugh way too loud. He points himself out, and then Sweet Pea can see it: his hair longer and lighter and a little curlier but his eyes the same. FP looks so different that Sweet Pea can barely recognize him at all - he has a smooth, polite little face and a laugh warming up his cheeks. They look impossibly young: big, goofy ‘we’re faking this’ smiles and wandering hands.

“You look happy,” says Sweet Pea, and Fred smiles like it’s the biggest old compliment anyone could have given him.

“Yeah,” he says. “We were.”

Toni says you know you’re in love when you want to blow chunks whenever you see the person. He wonders if that’s how she feels about that Northside redhead, the one who had turned up to the drag race dressed like the girls on Ace’s calendar. He wonders if that’s how Fred makes FP feel. How Fred still makes FP feel, if the way he talks about him is any indication.

“Didn’t people laugh at you?” Sweet Pea asks.

“Here’s a secret,” says Fred. “And it’s easier said than done, but it’s almost foolproof. If you stop caring what people say about you, they can’t hurt you anymore.”

“Spoken like someone who’s never got beaten up,” says Sweet Pea harshly, and Fred laughs.

“I guess you’re right. But that happened once to me. In my first year of high school, some senior boys followed me home. I tried to fight back, but there was more of them.”

“What happened?”

“Our friend FP found out. The next day I came to school and the three boys who’d done it were out sick.”

“What did he do to ‘em?” asks Sweet Pea, eager for the gory details. He’s not surprised that FP had creamed some guys who had messed with his boyfriend. Hell, he’d done the same for Jones when the Ghoulies had beat the shit out of him, and Jones was pretty far from his boyfriend.

“I don’t know,” says Fred, and Sweet Pea’s disappointed. “All I know is that they didn’t come back to school for awhile.”

Sweet Pea puts the pictures back in the envelope they’d come from. Fred keeps looking at him.

“Do you play any sports, Sweet Pea? Football, baseball?”

“No.” says Sweet Pea.

“Hm,” says Fred. 

“Why’d you ask?”

“Just curious,” says Fred, which Sweet Pea finds annoying as hell. And then, as if he thinks Sweet Pea’s just dying to know: “I used to play baseball." 

“I don’t care.”

“And basketball,” finishes Fred, as if he hadn’t heard. He taps the pencil in his hand against his chin. “It was fun.”

“I’m going back to bed,” says Sweet Pea, and slouches upstairs just in case Archie’s around. The last thing he wants right now is to run into that guy. On his way upstairs, he pinches a gumdrop off the gingerbread house out of spite. 

When he wakes up again, it’s past five. His stomach is rumbling and he thinks he might want something to eat after all. Friday should have been Ace’s payday. Maybe they could go grocery shopping on the way home.

Sweet Pea yanks up the blinds on the window and looks down at the street. Sure enough, Ace’s truck is parked by the curb. He feels more cheerful when he heads downstairs, hurrying on the last few steps. His head has stopped aching, and the quicker they can get out of there, the sooner everything can go back to normal, only-

Sweet Pea freezes at the bottom of the stairs. Fred is sitting on the sofa in the den, and Ace Rizzio is sitting beside him, sobbing into his hands. 

Fred has one hand on Ace’s back, not rubbing like he had for Sweet Pea, just resting there. Ace is crying like Sweet Pea’s never seen him cry. He’s not doing it loudly, but even from five feet away, Sweet Pea can hear him sniffling, his laboured breathing. Ace is crying as hopelessly and openly as a little kid. Sweet Pea hasn’t seen Ace cry since their mom died.

Sweet Pea backs up as silently as he can manage. When he’s reached the middle of the staircase he turns around, sprints back upstairs and pulls the covers over his head. 

He must have fallen asleep again, somehow, because the next thing he knows is that Ace - mercifully dry-eyed - is shaking him awake.

“Hey, buddy,” he says. “Dinner’s on, if you can eat it.”

If Ace knows Sweet Pea had seen him crying, he doesn’t say anything. Sweet Pea descends the staircase behind him with his mind running a million miles an hour. Trying to forget the image of his brother crying is a thousand times harder than trying not to think about creamed corn or Fangs’ hands, and no matter how hard he tries to push it away, it stays. He thinks he might remember that shit forever.

Now that he doesn’t feel like he’s on the verge of fainting, he can see the Christmas tree in the living room more clearly. Most of the ornaments are handmade, and pretty ugly. They have an angel on top of their tree instead of a star. Sweet Pea stares at it and thinks about Fangs, going to church with the Conroys. Sitting in the dumb pews and listening to the singing and knowing none of it was for him. It wasn’t fair. Sweet Pea thinks that if there are such thing as guardian angels, they’re only for rich Northside kids.

Archie’s over at his girlfriend’s for dinner, and Sweet Pea hates the interested look Ace gets in his eyes when Fred says that. Like that fucking Archie kid has managed to impress his brother more than him just because he’d found a girl that somehow didn’t puke at the sight of him. Sweet Pea could have a girlfriend if he wanted. He doesn’t want, that’s the whole problem. He’s kissed a couple girls before. But whatever the hell you were supposed to feel, he hadn’t felt. Not even close.

Dinner is nerve-wracking. He keeps waiting for Fred to say the wrong thing, or for someone to bring up FP, or, worst of all, for Ace to start crying again. Sweet Pea decides that at the first sign the conversation is going to swing over to him he’ll fake another puke attack. Only he doesn’t have to. Ace and Fred eat quietly, politely, and say only things that don’t matter. They talk about the snow. Fred prys a bit about their home life, acts like he wants to help somehow but doesn’t know how to bring it up. Ace keeps shutting him down. Sweet Pea eats his dinner and keeps his mouth closed.

There are Christmas cookies for dessert, but Sweet Pea remembers hunching over the rim of that toilet and doesn’t try one. Fred had done the little laundry they had while Sweet Pea was sleeping, and Ace starts folding it when dinner’s over: shirt, socks, pants, underwear. He lays it in the bottom of the bookbag.

“He says we can stay another night,” Ace says. “‘Till your fever’s gone.”

“I don’t want to,” says Sweet Pea immediately. Ace pauses with Sweet Pea’s pyjama shirt in his hands.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t want to. I feel better. I think we should go to Becky’s.”

Ace frowns. “I don’t know. You’re still sick.” 

“I’m fine, Ace.”

Ace keeps packing. Southside kids could pack quick: a duffel bag, a backpack. When people on the Northside moved it took boxes and trunks and U-Haul trucks to put it all in. But trailers could be emptied fast. Faster, if the cops were on their way. Whenever Fangs’ caseworker came by to tell him he had another home, Fangs could be packed and ready in ten minutes flat. 

Ten minutes. To pack up a whole life.

They ought to be worth more than that, Sweet Pea thinks. Fangs especially ought to be worth more than that. But there it was. Ten minutes and one duffel bag and that was all of them.

“I don’t know,” says Ace again, but folds reluctantly at Sweet Pea’s expression. “All right. I’ll tell him we’re going.”

Sweet Pea snorts at that, an angry, derisive snort that comes out of him before he can stop it. Ace looks like he wants to say something, but in the end he only shrugs and goes back downstairs.

Sweet Pea kicks the backpack he’d left on the ground. Hard. And then once more for good measure.

* * *

“Are you sure about this?” asks Fred as they’re leaving, looking sad. Archie’s home, hovering now, looking angry at them for making his father look sad. Sweet Pea lifts his chin up and hopes Archie’s upstairs bathroom smells like his puke for the rest of his ugly life. Fred had let him keep the bottle of Tylenol Cold and Flu and he touches it now through the pocket of his leather jacket. His toothbrush is in the other pocket, brand new and orange. “It’s already seven.”

“Whatever,” says Sweet Pea, not looking at Archie, just because he annoys him.

Fred hesitates. “It’s just - it’s Christmas.”  

He’s right: It’s Christmas eve tomorrow. Sweet Pea had forgotten, even with that tree right there. He’d get to give Fangs his present, if it wasn’t frozen in his closet at home.

“We’re fine,” says Ace confidently, in a no-nonsense tone. “My girlfriend has an apartment a couple minutes away. She’ll put us up for the holidays.” 

“Dad,” says Archie, and tugs on Fred’s sweater.

Fred still looks uncertain, and Sweet Pea feels a weird pang of loss. Maybe he should stay after all. It would piss that guy Archie off. And he could have that hot water bottle again.

Then he remembers that Fred knows he likes boys.

So, forget about it.


	9. the hopes and fears of all the years

**december 23**

They drive in silence for a little bit, the heater trying valiantly to keep up the warmth in the car. The vents don’t reach down below the dashboard, and Sweet Pea’s toes feel like blocks of ice.

“We really could have stayed, Sweet Pea,” says Ace, after a few minutes of stillness. “You’ve still got a fever.”

“I don’t trust Northsiders, that’s all. And you think that guy trusted us? Opening the door with the chain on it. He probably thinks we walked out with the whole cutlery drawer.”

“He’s FP’s boyfriend,” says Ace, almost defensively. “He’s not just some rando.”

“Ex-boyfriend,” corrects Sweet Pea, thinking of their conversation. Then a thought occurs to him. “And who knows why they broke up? Who knows what this guy’s done. Maybe he killed somebody.”

“Sweet Pea, you’re a smart kid, okay?” Ace combs a hand through Sweet Pea’s hair, a gesture that could be soothing if Sweet Pea’s skin wasn’t on fire. “But I don’t want you thinking everyone’s always out to get you.” Ace shakes his head and barks out a weird laugh. “I still can’t believe FP-”

 _Is a queer_ , he doesn’t say. Ace lifts his shoulders in an offhand shrug. “He just doesn’t seem like the type. Boyfriend. Yeesh.”

Sweet Pea thinks his brother would be mighty surprised at the kind of people who were that type. He’s starting to feel queasy again. Every muscle in his body feels knotted and tight.

“Hey, I mean, it’s a free country,” says Ace offhandedly, misinterpreting Sweet Pea’s silence for disagreement. “‘Least he doesn’t brag about it.”

“I thought you said not to call him a faggot,” says Sweet Pea suddenly, his voice sounding strained and unlike himself. He’s bit his tongue so hard that it’s bleeding.

“I didn’t!” Ace frowns at him. “What’s your beef, Sweet Pea? He was a nice guy.”

“A nice guy!” Sweet Pea spits. He doesn’t know where this sudden anger is coming from but he feels it hot and molten in him, bubbling and burning like a furnace. “You just like him cause you wanna suck his dick and he let you cry in his arms like a fucking _baby._ ”  

The dead silence that follows this proclamation fills the car like a thunderclap: leaden and complete. Ace goes very, very quiet. They’re outside of the suburbs now, and there are no other cars on the road. Ace pulls the car off to the side and parks it.

“You say that again,” says Ace tonelessly, his voice dangerously still. “Sweet Pea I’m going to give you one fucking chance to look me in the eyes and tell me what you just said to me.” 

Sweet Pea looks up at him, meets his unyielding blue gaze and feels the terror and the rage simmer up from his stomach. “You’re a fucking coward. I saw you. You were crying all over him like a girl. Like a queer.”

He spits the last word, and Ace draws his hand back, sharp, like he’s about to smack Sweet Pea across the face. Then he freezes. Sweet Pea takes advantage of the moment to seize the door handle, throw it open, and bolt out across the frozen grass.

“Sweet Pea, you mother _fucker_ -” He hears the car door slam behind him and Ace catches up to him in a flash, seizing the back of the collar of his shirt. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Let go of me!” Sweet Pea pulls forward out of his brother’s grasp, hands balled tightly into fists. He can feel the anger simmering in him all over again, frothing, boiling over. Sweet Pea has anger running through him like red thread. “Fuck you!” he spits, muscles sore and shaking. “Fuck off!”

Ace turns him around and grabs him by the shoulders, shaking him roughly. “Did this guy try something with you, Sweet Pea? Is that why you’re acting like this, because I swear to god-”

 _“NO! IDIOT!”_ screams Sweet Pea at the top of his voice, because Mr. “Call-Me-Fred” Andrews was probably the sweetest, _loveliest_ motherfucker he’d ever met and the last thing he deserved was it getting around that he messed with little kids just because Sweet Pea was fucking terrified of what he’d told him. “You’re the one who’s _fucking_ with me-”

He kicks Ace in the shin, who drops him in surprise, and Sweet Pea takes off running. Ace is faster, even if Sweet Pea has longer legs, and soon he feels his brother’s hand close once more over the scruff of his neck. 

“GET YOUR FAGGOT HANDS OFF ME!” screams Sweet Pea at the top of his lungs, his voice echoing through the empty field, all the way back to the highway. “GET THEM OFF ME-”

Ace shoves him, not hard, but enough to knock his legs out from under him. Sweet Pea spills forward onto the ground and feels the breath burst out of his lungs as he hits the dirt. He feels the threat of tears at the back of his eyes, but he forces them away, locking his hands over his head instead and shutting his eyes tight. 

“Sweet Pea?” His brother is hovering above him, shoes crunching in the gravel beside his face. Sweet Pea doesn’t move. “You okay? I didn’t hit you that hard, did I?” 

Sweet Pea clutches his hands tighter, silent, willing it all away, willing for it all to stop. Wishing he wasn’t thinking of Fangs even now, the unerring softness of his hands and the warm grin he got when he was happy. How he’d taught Fangs to ride a motorbike and Fangs had taught him to throw a knife and he would never, never, stop dreaming about the way Fangs’ arms felt around his body on the back of the bike. Or the way he smiled when Toni said something funny down in the quarry, the way his eyes went amber in firelight. Any of it. Ever.

“Sweet Pea?” Ace is crouching now, hands hovering over Sweet Pea’s body. When Sweet Pea doesn’t respond, he grips Sweet Pea under the armpits and pulls him against him, the way FP’s boyfriend had pulled him up in front of the toilet. “C’mere buddy.” His voice has lost all inflection: he is talking in the dull, defeated way of someone hopeless. “Come on, get up. We’re going back to the car.” 

They ride the rest of the way to Becky’s apartment in silence. Sweet Pea stares out the window, half-angry and half-empty and feeling cold from the inside out. Becky doesn’t ask why they’re not speaking when they get there. She asks if they’ve eaten, and Ace tells her yes when Sweet Pea doesn’t bother to answer. She and Ace set up the couch for Sweet Pea and then disappear into the bedroom.

Becky has a Christmas angel set out on the coffee table beside the TV remote. Sweet Pea picks it up and looks at it. The figurine is made of heavy, iridescent glass. It’s face is a smooth oval with no features in it. There is a long crack running through one of its wings: a shuddering flaw in the crystal smoothness of it. He puts it back down.

Sweet Pea waits a while, turning over the bottle of daytime cold meds in his hands, seeing if they’ll start talking about him. But they don’t, or he falls asleep before they do, his legs too long for the couch, his chest so tight that he thinks his ribcage might splinter.

The toilet flushing wakes him up, because the walls in Becky’s apartment are as thin as glass. Sweet Pea sits up on the couch, glancing over at the microwave clock. 2:19. He thinks of Fred again, Fred sitting on the living room couch with one hand on Ace’s heaving, trembling back and has the terrifying thought that angels must look something like that. Christmas angels. If they’re real.

The bathroom door opens. It could be Becky or Clarissa, but Sweet Pea knows it isn’t. Ace always wakes up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. He opens his mouth to call out to his brother, but can’t get the words out. His voice stutters and fails him.

Ace’s shadow pauses on the kitchen wall. Sweet Pea knows he sees him, and yet they stay for a moment pretending not to see each other, eyes adjusting to the dark. 

“Hey,” says Ace finally, in a low voice, so he doesn’t wake the girls up. “You doing okay?”

“Ace-” says Sweet Pea weakly, and then nothing else. Ace seems to understand the meaning anyways and picks his way through the crowded living room, seating himself next to Sweet Pea on the sofa. His brother wraps one arm around him, and Sweet Pea feels tears rise hotly behind his eyes as Ace pulls him in closer. 

“I didn’t mean it,” he sobs, letting Ace clutch him. “I don’t think you’re a coward.”

“I know, Sweet Pea. I know you didn’t mean it. You’re just a kid. I’m not mad at you.” Ace lets Sweet Pea cry in his arms, holding him tighter than anyone, tighter than Fred, tighter than their mother used to. Sweet Pea buries his face in his brother’s warm shoulder and shakes. When he’s cried himself out, Ace pulls back from their hug just enough to tuck some of Sweet Pea’s hair behind his ear for him.

“Why would you say that stuff, Sweet Pea?” he asks quietly.

“I don’t - I don’t know.”

“You know I’m not gay, right?”

“I know,” says Sweet Pea, and imagines the end of that sentence (I was worried you’d think I was.)

( _Why would I think that?_ Ace would ask him.)

(Because it’s true.)

He hears himself say it in his head, the big awful admission of it, the thing that’s been rattling around in his head, increasing in pressure, ever since that day Toni had thrown the word at him - _bisexual_ \- and he had known in some dark, cold part inside of him that it was his. The only Christmas present he’d get or deserve. And he could tell Ace now, and let it be out in the open, and let Ace hate him, or forgive him, or whatever Ace had to do.  

Only he wants just for this one night to be held. Held like this, where it was warm inside and snow outside, where he could pretend there was nothing wrong with him. To be comforted and feel deserving of it.

He could say it now, in the dark, in the rapidly slipping seconds before Christmas Eve morning rolled around. But instead he lets Ace hold him, and he doesn’t speak, and he doesn’t confess, and he doesn’t admit, and he says nothing.


	10. the door is always open

**christmas eve**

Ace drives them back to the apartment the next morning to get more clothes. The second they walk into the apartment, Sweet Pea knows something’s different. For one thing, he can’t see his breath in front of him anymore. For another, all the frost inside the windows is gone and he can see out them again.

“It’s a Christmas miracle,” says Ace wryly, but looks threateningly close to collapsing of relief. He swats Sweet Pea on the back. “Go take another shower, you stink.”

From the bathroom window of their now-heated apartment, Sweet Pea can just see the spire of a church. He stares at it sometimes when he’s brushing his teeth. He stares at it now and thinks about Fangs. Fangs’ll be getting ready to go to church with his foster family later today.

He feels guilty all the time about this one Christmas, back when their parents were still around. The only thing Sweet Pea had wanted had been a racing bike. The blue one in the front window of the store on 3rd Avenue. Then Christmas had rolled around and he’d got books, and a toy, and a set of coloured pencils from his brother. (This was back when Ace still went by Eyeball.) But no bike. He’d thrown a fit and snapped every one of those pencils. And then his dad had shown him that the bike had been too big to fit in the house and had been waiting for him out in the garage.

The thing is, Sweet Pea had been an ungrateful little shit of a kid too.

But maybe it’s no wonder. Fangs has been Sweet Pea’s best friend for his whole life. Sweet Pea’s never been good at being satisfied with what he’s got.

His phone rings as he’s gelling his hair down. “Get a move on,” Toni says when he picks up. “We’re decorating Jones’ trailer.”

“How come Jones gets his trailer decorated?” asks Sweet Pea.

“‘Cause his dad’s in jail, asshole.”

“I don’t even know where my dad is. Doesn’t mean I can’t decorate my own home.”

“Who peed in your cereal?” asks Toni with a laugh. “Where have you been, anyway? No one’s seen you. We’re going shovelling in ten.” 

“Been sick.” says Sweet Pea simply, eyes landing once more on the church steeple. What time is church, anyways? Seven? Nine? Midnight? He could ask Fangs today, only it might be weird.

“Well, get better fast, because Ricky’s friend got us booze. And Scott’s already lighting up. Do you need a ride?”  

“I got the bike. Why didn’t Julian get us booze?”

“He’s going through stuff.” Toni’s voice gets lower and more serious. “We went to see his mom in the hospital this morning.”

Sweet Pea listens. Apparently Julian’s mom had had gifts for her sons: Christmas tree ornaments shaped like angels that the hospital residents had made as crafts. Toni tells Sweet Pea privately that Julian had dissolved into sobbing over it and hadn’t stopped until they’d led him from the hospital room, the little angel clasped in his fist. Sweet Pea had been glad that he’d missed it. Toni was the one who was good with crying people. Not him.

“How’s she doing?” Sweet Pea asks. Toni drops her voice almost to a whisper. Sweet Pea wonders if Julian’s in the room.

“They want to try some new medication or something. But it’s big bucks. They can’t afford it.” He hears a short, unintelligible scuffle from her end of the phone, like she had turned her face away from the receiver. “Just get down here, will you?” 

“Okay. Don’t start shovelling without me. You know I’m the best.”

“If you say so, Chief,” says Toni, and salutes. He doesn’t see her salute, but he knows she does it. Toni’s a lot of fun, at least when Jones isn’t around. When Jones is around, she makes it pretty clear that the rest of them were just keeping her entertained until someone smart enough for her came along. Which, whatever. Sweet Pea doesn’t care.

Shovelling the trailer park is something they do every year on Christmas Eve. All the younger serpents get together and clear all the steps and porches in Sunnyside. It’s a pretty sweet gig, because the porches are small, and the residents are always grateful: usually bring them hot cocoa or invite them in for cookies. When Sweet Pea gets there, Fangs’ gift tucked at the bottom of his bag, a bunch of them are already waiting: Toni, Fangs, Ricky, Jones, Julian and Scott, leaning on snow shovels, chatting away. It’s a warm, full-sun kind of morning already, and snow is melting off the trees and roofs.

“Gonna get cold later,” Ricky promises when Sweet Pea points it out. “Cold front moving in. It’s supposed to drop like crazy tonight. That heating fixed at your place?” 

“Yeah,” says Sweet Pea, and Ricky looks cheered. 

“Thank god.”

“We would have had to thaw you out in the spring,” says Jones wrly, and fuck him, but Ricky laughs at it. Sweet Pea heads over to Fangs, who’s leaning absentmindedly against his snow shovel, his jacket hanging open despite the wind.

“Lets go,” says Toni, and claps her hands. Sweet Pea isn’t sure who decided to make her boss, but at least it’s not Jones giving orders. If Jones had tried that, he would have put one of the shovels right through that thick head of his. 

Fangs leans in close to Sweet Pea, speaking low and private so the others can’t hear. “You still sick?” 

“Nah, I’m fine,” says Sweet Pea.

“That’s good,” says Fangs, and smiles. Sweet Pea feels a little shiver run up him that has absolutely nothing to do with the chill. Sweet Pea’s no romantic, but he thinks he might walk all the way to the end of the earth for that smile.

They head from trailer to trailer clearing sidewalks and getting cookies. Hot Dog follows them, leaping up and down in the snow. Then a fight breaks out because Ricky wants to go to the Northside in his truck and clear Fred’s driveway, and then peel out of there before he can notice. Scott says it’s too far. Sweet Pea says it’s stupid. “He’s got a kid who can do it for him,” Sweet Pea protests, but Ricky won’t let up. He fixed Ricky’s truck, after all. It’s that favour for a favour thing. Serpent’s honour. 

In the end, Jones, Toni, Julian and Ricky end up going, and Fangs, Scott and Sweet Pea hang around with the dog. Jones is hosting the party that night, so they all end up in his trailer. Scott decides there isn’t enough tinsel on the tree, so they start throwing handfuls at it. Sweet Pea tucks his present underneath, where it’ll be safe. 

“Who’d you get?” asks Fangs, reclining on the couch. It’s a Secret Santa thing: they do it every year. Stupid prank gifts, mostly, because they don’t have the money for big ones. Most of their wrapping paper is pilfered from the recycling bins.

“It’s a secret,” says Sweet Pea, and Fangs gets a kick out of that, laughs along with him. “I got Toni,” he confides, leaning in so that his hand brushes Sweet Pea’s thigh. “But I don’t know her really well, so I hope she likes it.”

Sweet Pea’s stomach does a flip flop. “She’ll like it,” he says assuredly. “I know she’ll like it.”

“Cool,” says Fangs, and rewards him with another shy smile. “Cool.”

 

* * *

Some of the Serpents split after that, head back home to spend time with their families before meeting up again in the evening. Sweet Pea and Fangs are among the ones who stay behind. The snow is damp and moldable, just right for packing, so they make a couple snow forts out in the field behind Sunnyside and have a real snow war. Maybe it’s stupid, kid stuff, but you only get to do shit like that for so long. Sweet Pea’s kind of sick still, but he wouldn’t miss watching Fangs hurl snow at people for anything.

He doesn’t tell anyone about the fight with his brother. It feels both too insignificant and too important. Maybe Jones could have put it into words, or Toni, but Sweet Pea wouldn’t have known what to say. They crowd back in the trailer for cocoa after, and everyone ends up in a circle talking about Christmas and shit. 

The pile of presents under the tree gets steadily bigger. When dinner rolls around, they roast a big package of hot dogs over one of the fire pits and wash it down with Christmas cookies from Julian’s house. Then booze from Ricky’s. Sweet Pea notices Jones doesn’t touch the drinks. 

Secret Santa is the same dumb shit as usual. Scott had wrapped a dime bag of weed for Sweet Pea, and they all howl with laughter at the idiocy of it. Fangs bumps his shoulder and asks if he’s down to share. Sweet Pea says yeah, but not with any of these other clowns. They’ll have to get their own. Scott jeers and Toni boos, but they all smile. Christmas is a time for smiling.

“This one’s for Fangs,” says Ricky next, and digs the box that Sweet Pea had spent an hour and a half wrapping out from under the tree. Sweet Pea feels his hands start to sweat a bit. He takes a gulp of beer to reassure himself. 

Fangs doesn’t give him time to worry. Fangs is an impatient gift-opener. He rips at the wrapping paper and tears at the ribbon, pulling the lid off the box with greedy, well-muscled hands.

For the first time, Sweet Pea isn’t watching his hands. Sweet Pea watches his face. Fangs lights up like a Christmas tree. His grin gets big enough to expose his crooked eyetooth, the one he’s always been self-conscious about. His eyes go clear and brilliant and full of life. Fangs lifts the dog tags out of the box, reads the inscription, holds them close to him like they’re precious. 

He looks up. Looks at all of them.

“Who is it from?” he asks. 

Sweet Pea’s tongue feels stuck, but it doesn’t matter, because Toni and Ricky jump in for him. “Sweet Pea!” They cheer, Ricky thumping him on the back and forearm like a champion. Fangs turns his smile on him, and it’s like being beamed with a ten-thousand megawatt glow. Fangs’ mouth drops open as if to speak, and then he closes it with a laugh like he can’t think of what to say. Sweet Pea’s cheeks hurt, and then he realizes he’s smiling.

A thought occurs to Sweet Pea, shimmering in the dark of his subconscious like frost on a windowpane. _Tell him._

No, he thinks.

_Tell him tonight._

He couldn’t tell Ace. Not for the life of him, not for anything. But could he tell Fangs? Would Fangs understand? Fangs knew about Toni and Fangs knew about Ricky and maybe Fangs even knew about Jones. Fangs is too gentle to hate. Maybe Fangs would get it. Maybe Fangs would understand.

It’s just that it’s different, somehow, with Sweet Pea. He doesn’t think he’s special or anything, he’s not being cocky. It’s just that it’s different with him liking guys than it is with Ricky or Jones liking guys and he doesn’t know why. Maybe it’s his brother. Maybe it’s something else. But he doesn’t think he could stand it if he told Fangs something and then Fangs looked at him differently. And suppose Fangs put two and two together and figured out why Sweet Pea was always looking at his hands too long? Or why he never looked at him in the locker room? 

“No fair,” says Ricky loudly, as Fangs hangs his dog tags proudly around his neck. “No one told me we were doing nice stuff.”

For a moment Sweet Pea feels his heart stop. He had clearly spent the most out of anyone on his gift. Maybe everyone knows what that means. Maybe they all know, and they’re sitting around laughing at him for thinking they don’t. Maybe they pity him.

Sweet Pea sits in the middle of the room and wishes to disappear. Feels too visible and utterly invisible at the same time.

“Hot dog needs to open his gift!” calls Toni, interrupting Ricky, and drags the last package in front of the sheepdog. They all help rip the paper off in front of him. The gift ends up being a huge package of dog biscuits, and everyone claps and smiles. Hot Dog runs in a circle, excited. Fangs is the first one to tear open the package and feed him one.

Toni’s lucky because that Northside girl likes her back for real. They’re going skating tomorrow on Christmas Day, and the Northside girl - Cheryl, is her name - has already bought Toni a pair of ice skates as a Christmas present. Sweet Pea thinks Toni could crawl through shit and come out clean. Meanwhile, he’s sitting here like an idiot with Fangs’ thigh just barely brushing against his knee hairs, and that’s all he’s ever going to get.

Only that’s his fault.

So maybe he should tell him.

They end up lounging in smaller circles, some of them smoking, all of them drinking, except for Jones. Julian is acting normal, chatting with Fangs about school. Fangs and Julian took the same physics class. Julian is saying he still has notes somewhere, if Fangs wants them. Sweet Pea is hovering, trying to look like he’s part of the conversation.

Not far away, Toni is bragging about her date with Cheryl. She has a Santa hat perched on her head, making her pink hair look even pinker than normal. Jones is sitting on the floor looking up at her. You couldn’t get one of them without the other recently. Best fucking friends. Sweet Pea is going to roll his eyes and ignore them, only he perks his head up at at something he hears Jones say.

“Mr. A told me once,” Jones is saying, “loving boys is best in the summer and loving girls is best in the winter.”

Sweet Pea thinks that’s stupid. You can love whoever you want any old time of the year.

“Guys can cuddle too,” says Toni, who clearly also thinks its stupid, but is being too polite to say so.

“FP’s not a cuddler.”

They laugh. FP’s sex life is a big joke to everyone. Good thing the guy’s in prison. Sweet Pea gets up, figures out he has nowhere to go and no one to talk to, and goes to get another beer out of the fridge.

Outside it’s starting to snow. He thinks about Ace for a second, Ace taking an extra shift at the factory for the time-and-a-half, not looking out the window because there were no windows. Sweet Pea coughs into his sleeve and uses his knife to pry the top off the bottle. Figures out there’s an extra tray of cheese in the fridge that no one’s been eating and shoves six pieces into his mouth at once. 

The circles have merged when he comes back, and the tone has shifted significantly. All eyes are on Julian, and Toni is playing with the ends of her hair in the way she only does when she’s uncomfortable. Which isn’t often. Fangs is smoothing his fingers over and over the face of his dog tags, looking as if he’s tapped out of the conversation for awhile. Sweet Pea smiles and sits down next to him.

“Doesn’t matter anyway,” Julian is saying in a low voice. “My computer’s busted, and I can’t go to school if I don’t have a computer.”

“How much does it cost to fix?” presses Ricky, and Julian shakes his head. 

“Enough that I might as well just buy a new one.” 

“I can ask for one for you,” speaks up Fangs, and Sweet Pea turns to look at him. “They let all the foster care kids ask for something.” 

“No one’s going to shell out to buy a foster kid a fucking laptop computer, okay Fangs?”

“Hey, don’t fucking yell at him.” speaks up Sweet Pea abruptly, and everyone falls silent.

Julian stares evenly at Sweet Pea, swallows a bunch of times, and gets up to leave.

“Hey, quit it,” says Toni. “Say sorry, both of you. Fangs was just trying to help.”

“No, he’s right,” says Fangs simply, looking mildly regretful but not upset. “It was a stupid idea.”

He glances down, touches his dog tags, and then looks back up at Sweet Pea with a smile. Then he looks back at Julian. “Sorry, Julian.”

“Sorry Julian,” says Sweet Pea.

“It’s okay,” says Julian softly. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to yell.”

* * *

Then he’s standing in a corner of the room with Fangs, talking about something he doesn’t remember why he cares about, only that he has to keep talking so that Fangs will keep his eyes trained on him. The lights are glittery and his head is fuzzy and Fangs is very close to him. Fangs is big and lean and muscular and radiates heat.

 _Tell him_ , thinks Sweet Pea. _It has to be now. If it’s going to be before Christmas. If it’s going to be with no one else around. Tell him now._  

Everyone else has moved to the other room. Fangs is smiling. Sweet Pea starts to think he could really do it. Tell him right now. He starts reaching into his head for the words. Compiling them. _I have to tell you something_ , he would start. Or, _can I tell you something?_

“I really like these,” says Fangs, and cups the dog tags in one of his big, tanned hands. “They’re really cool.”

“I’m just going to the bathroom,” murmurs Sweet Pea. His stomach is cramping up again and he’s worried he’s going to be sick. “I’ll be back.”

He slips to the back of the trailer and bangs on the bathroom door. When no one yells at him to give them a minute, he walks in. The whole room smells like weed. Sweet Pea holds onto the counter and breathes out for a minute. Counts to ten.

Then forty.

Then sixty.

_You can do it now. Go back before it's too late._

Or wait. He could wait until it was too late, until the rest of them came flooding in from the other room and there wasn’t another chance to get Fangs alone.

Or he could go. Just do it. _Say something, at least. Anything. Tell him he’s your best friend._

He’s not sick. The bad feeling in his stomach, it turns out, had everything to do with the words he couldn’t say.

Sweet Pea doesn’t know what words to say. Sweet Pea isn’t good with words. Sweet Pea has been turning in blank papers for creative writing. Sometimes nothing at all. 

Fangs is still alone when he comes back into the living room. Sweet Pea sits down next to him. Braces his hands on his knees. Gets ready to say it. 

But Fangs looks at him and the words stick in his throat. Jones is the wordmaster. Not him. There are no good words to say this. None. 

Sweet Pea lets out a deep breath and says nothing.


	11. once bitten and twice shy

**december 24**

Alice Cooper went all out for Christmas Eve dinner each year, and then did it all again the next evening on Christmas proper. Fred and Mary, next door, had always been far more economical. Looking forward to a family meal on the 25th, they’d long ago learned that Christmas Eves were better spent trading in the fancy dishes for ordering a pizza or a platter of egg rolls. No one had to slave over a stove, and Archie was always thrilled to bits.

This year, Fred calls Pop’s for takeout.

He could have had it delivered, which, in retrospect, would have made things easier. But Fred hated to think about Pop or anyone trying to drive through bluffs of snow to get him and Archie their two cheeseburgers with bacon. Fred wasn’t about to cause a car wreck on Christmas Eve. So it’s him bundling his sore leg into his warmest winter boots, shoving an old pair of mittens into his coat pocket for when he inevitably has to brush off the car in the parking lot. Archie hovers by him as he’s wrapping his scarf around his neck.

“I can go, Dad. It’s not a big deal.”

“It’s all good, Arch.” Fred smiles at him. “Hold down the fort for when I get back.”

The parking lot is almost deserted when he gets there, snow falling lightly from a sky that’s grown already dark. Pop had taken down the bell over the door, so his arrival is greeted with silence. Pop lifts a hand in greeting, and Fred returns it.

Pop’s been hanging mistletoe above the jukebox as long as Fred’s been alive. He looks at it now so he won’t look at the booth where he had been sitting, the ground where Archie had held him. Remembers what feels like a hundred teenage christmases, complaining to Pop about his meagre allowance and then ordering an extra large milkshake, dancing with Hermione on the polished linoleum, Mary’s upturned face bathed in the jukebox light. Always that mistletoe. Sometimes kisses.

He stares at the floor. Thinks he can see the blood spreading if he looks close enough. Hot and thick and a little too red. Christmas red: _Silent Night, Deadly Night_ red. _Black Christmas_ red.

“Fred?”

He can suddenly feel every heartbeat that pulses in him. It is as if his pulse has become a living, beating thing, burrowing into his throat and twining around his wrists like rope. Fred reaches up and loosens the scarf around his neck. Takes it off and drops it by mistake.

“Fred?”

His head is starting to rush. This is not a good thing. Fred reaches up to pull his shirt collar away from his neck, but his hands are nerveless and don’t work right. His ears are thrumming with the sound of his blood.

“Freddy?” says Pop sharply, and Fred’s head snaps around. He uncurls his nails from the palms of his hands and the blood goes out of his ears a bit.

“What?” he asks.

There are two brown bags of takeout waiting on the counter. Fred breathes out and his vision clears.

“Order up.”

Fred nods absently and takes out his wallet, but Pop shakes his head at him.

“On the house,” says Pop, and whether it’s because he almost died there or because he used to kiss Mary (and Hermione, and FP, and a lot of people) under those lights, he doesn’t know and doesn’t ask. Probably the former. Fred looks down at the floor again, and then quickly away.

“Merry Christmas, Fred,” says Pop.

“Thanks,” says Fred. “Merry Christmas.”

* * *

  **december 24**

He and Fangs walk through the Northside in long, looping circles, the Christmas lights splashing colourful bloodstains on the snowdrifts. The thing about trailer parties is that they get stifling. They’d started out walking toward the railroad tracks, meaning to just goof around in the deep snow there. But the houses across the tracks had much nicer Christmas lights, and Fangs had wanted to go see them. So they’re walking. Sweet Pea hides his coughing in his scarf every time his throat starts acting up. He doesn’t want Fangs to think they should turn around.

“I love these houses,” says Fangs, with a dreamyness he’d never let himself have in the trailer park. “They’re so big and cool.”

“Yeah,” says Sweet Pea. He hides another cough in his unravelling mitten. Thinks maybe the universe is giving him a second chance to tell Fangs what he hadn’t been able to tell him during the party, only Sweet Pea has every intention of continuing to let the universe - and their writing teacher Miss Smitt - down. “The lights are cool.”

“Sometimes,” says Fangs quietly, “When I walk down here I pretend I have a family in one of these houses. And I know it’s stupid, because I do have a family. I have the Conroys. And you guys. But sometimes I… I think I want to know what it’s like to have a fireplace. You know?”

Sweet Pea finds he actually does know. “Yeah,” he agrees, shaking slush out of his soaked tennis shoe as they pause on a dry bit of pavement. Sweet Pea wouldn’t mind a fireplace either. Sweet Pea wants to live somewhere the heat can’t turn off. But more than anything he wants someone to tell him what to do about his stupid, stupid, crush on Fangs and the words in his throat that he can’t say to him.

“I like looking in the windows,” says Fangs. “Is that creepy?”

“Nah,” says Sweet Pea. “If they didn’t want you to look, they’d close the blinds.”

Fangs laughs. “I have to go soon,” he says. “My foster parents are taking me to church.”

“Is church always this late?”

“Just on Christmas Eve,” says Fangs. “There’s a pageant.”

Sweet Pea has never heard that word in his life. He falls in love with it immediately. _Pageant._ Sweet Pea has never liked words, but that one is okay. Pretty, even. It sounds the way he wants Fangs to feel about him.

Sweet Pea doesn’t know what a pageant is. He doesn’t think he wants to. He won’t ask.

Maybe sometimes it’s better if you never know.

“Can I show you something?” asks Sweet Pea.

They’re nearing Elm Street, the place he’d left only a couple days ago. If you cut straight down from here you get to the railroad tracks right away, and Fangs’ house. But the place he wants to go isn’t far.

“Sure.” Fangs is up for anything at this hour. His dog tags are buried inside his jacket - he’d finally zipped it up - but Sweet Pea pictures them nestling into his shirt, glinting a bit in the Christmas lights, Fangs’ name stamped across them, forever. Sweet Pea wonders why _can I show you something_ is so easy to say and _can I tell you something_ is so hard.

Sweet Pea had seen the house for the first time on their first drive to see FP’s boyfriend, the one undertaken in Ricky’s crumbling old truck. The motor had stalled right outside it. When he’d gone back to Fred’s he’d walked past it on purpose, and caught another glimpse out the driver’s side window that day he’d been sick.

It sat two streets over from Elm, just on the corner where you turned to head down to the Southside border: all shingle and wrought iron and porch. The Christmas lights are all white, giving it the appearance of some kind of spaceship, or else a church. It’s the nicest colour combination Sweet Pea’s ever seen: a beautiful, willowish tawny above brown, even, bricklaying. The door is a deep watchet blue with a massive pine wreath, and one of the corners of the house ends in a tower. A real tower, like in a book. That was why Sweet Pea liked it.

“Who lives there?” asks Fangs.

“Dunno,” says Sweet Pea, waiting for the moment. People always tell you there is going to be a Moment. That you’re going to feel something magic, magnetic, and turn around and _know_ . And say _I love you_ at the right time, in the right place, to the right person. If Ace hadn’t told him about it, Sweet Pea would think it was all some bullshit. But there was a Moment for Ace and Becky. Lots of them. Sometimes when Ace was in high school, he would keep Sweet Pea up all night telling him about them, cheeks flushed with love and happiness. For Ace, the right moments had just come, had come and come and come again like the snow.

Maybe people like him didn’t get a Moment. Only that was bullshit too, because he would have bet all his savings that Mr. Fred Andrews on Elm Street was a big believer in the Moment. A snowy Christmas Eve and an evening walk should have been just about the best moment there was: the kind of moment you paid nine bucks to see at the drive in. But Sweet Pea stands there with slush in his shoes, hands like blocks of ice in his crumbling mitts, and no moment happens. Or maybe he’s just too scared to let it start.

“I saw this place a little while ago,” Sweet Pea says, playing it off as nonchalant. His mouth feels like cotton. “Sometimes I think about it, and I think about.. I don’t know, not that I’d want to live here. But maybe, like, my brother moving into it or something. Him and Becky. And having a family.”

Sweet Pea swallows, chokes himself off before he can say _and their kids going to school here and having a chance_. He knows he sounds like a miserable hypocrite. Sweet Pea isn’t supposed to dream about being Northside. Not even being related to Northside. That’s stupid. That’s the stuff that should make his blood boil. It’s not the Northside he wants, though, it’s the house. The kind of house you can’t ignore. The kind of house you can’t bulldoze to make a golf course.

“I just think the tower’s cool,” he says.

Fangs has no mittens. Fangs’ gentle hands are very red from the wind. Sweet Pea looks at them and wants to take one in his. He wants it more than he wants the house. The blue door and the tower mean shit all next to those hands. If Fangs let him hold his hand right now, he doesn’t think he’d ever give a shit about towers again.

He realizes too late that the ache in his throat is no longer due to his lingering illness. The tightness of breath behind his tongue is because he is crying. His vision has gone wet, watery, and blurred. Sweet Pea tries with all his might to blink it back.

“Sweet Pea?” asks Fangs, hearing his silence. “Is something wrong?”

The snow is falling so softly. They stand looking out at the house, and Sweet Pea knows this could be it, if he takes the chance. Not perfect, but close. The right time to talk. To say the thing he hadn’t told Ace, ever, or Jones, or even Toni. No one, ever.

Sweet Pea breathes. Knows he’ll regret it if he says nothing. Knows it’ll never get easier.

A moment passes. Another one.

“No.” says Sweet Pea firmly, at last. “It’s just fuckin’ cold out, is all. Let’s go back.”


	12. last christmas i gave you my heart

**december 24**

The prison is cold and dry. The few decorations that are up look almost pathetically worn. A faded crepe-paper chain hangs down from the doorway and trails limply a few inches above the floor, looking like a pre-apocalypse remnant in a disaster film. Jughead tears it down when he walks by. It feels like putting something out of its misery.  

“Been waiting for you,” says FP when he gets there. “My ghost of Christmas present.”

Jughead sits down opposite him. “Hi, Dad.”

The glass that is separating them is not very thick. Not thin enough to punch through, sure. Reinforced with something. But the glass itself is not thick. His father is no more than an inch or two from him. If Jughead could reach through the glass, he would. If Jughead still believed in Santa, he would have asked him for nothing more or less tomorrow than for that sheet of glass to disappear. Just to touch his father one more time.

FP tries to smile at him, and Jughead is breathless from how brave he is. It’s not supposed to be like that. Children are not supposed to admire their parents courage. It should be the other way around. But the Jones family has never done things right.

“Next Christmas this will be behind us, Jughead,” says FP, a tiredness and a warmth in his eyes that makes Jughead think of the look he has seen on Fred’s face too many times. “I promise you.”

Jughead believes him, although FP’s promises mean very little after a childhood of forgotten ones. He watches his father’s breath on the glass and wants to be in another place: somewhere far away where these things are worked out. He can believe in next Christmas. But not this one.

They talk for an hour or so. FP asks him questions about his foster family that Jughead isn’t sure how to answer anymore. He panics, dodges the question, and tells FP that he’s staying at Fred’s for Christmas Eve.

“He didn’t tell me that,” says FP softly, and Jughead remembers his Christmas Carol quip. Ghosts of Christmas Past always came first.

“You saw Fred.”

“He came by,” says FP.

There’s a name for the thing rounding out FP’s expression, but even Jughead, the writer, can’t find it. He thinks and is scared to think that it’s simply _love_.

Keller lets him stay a half-hour past visiting hours have ended, but then he kicks him out. Keller has a family to get home to too, after all.

* * *

**december 24**

The sky is inky-dark above the houses, but there are so many lights on in the town that the streets are bright as day. The temperature has dropped. It slides down the thermometer outside Jones’ trailer and puddles deep below zero. The wind screams through the trailer park and soaks another seven degrees away. Sweet Pea had gone back to the party for his six-pack of beer. The six-pack in hand, he walks now up through the darkening streets of the Southside toward home, his head aching more than ever. If it were not for the buzz of the drink, he knows he’d be too frozen to move. Sweet Pea feels safer here than he does above the railroad tracks, but he misses Fangs. He’s glad it’s cold because it freezes his thoughts in his head. It keeps him from thinking about any of it.

There’s a Christmas tree in their living room when he gets in. The tree is scrubby and crooked, but real. The floor around it is carpeted in pine needles, though Ace has made some effort to sweep them into a pile. A couple ornaments and a chain of popcorn cover some of the patchier spots.

Sweet Pea goes to it. Touches it. The tree still has sap on it, and though his nose is plugged from the cold, he tries to inhale anyway. Thinks the pine must smell as nice as it looks. The needles are sharp and stick to his numb fingers: he brushes them clumsily off. Ace has set out presents under it. Sweet Pea counts them. It doesn’t take long. There’s three.

The ornaments are new: Ace must have bought them just for this. Sweet Pea sets his six-pack down below the tree and goes into the kitchen to warm up. The kitchen is the warmest spot in the house. Sweet Pea’s neck is so stiff from the cold that can he barely turn his head from left to right.

“Hey,” says Ace. He is leaning up against the sink with a bottle of beer in his hand. His brother looks very tired, and very old. He is still in his work clothes. “How was the party?”

“You got us a tree,” says Sweet Pea, and Ace laughs in a wobbly way, and drops his beer bottle in the sink. “Yeah. Do you like it?”

“Yeah,” says Sweet Pea, wishing he could put more into that word somehow, wishing he could make Ace understand how grateful he was for him. That he understood the sacrifice it had taken for him to get it. Jones would have known how to say these things: Toni, or even Fangs, because Fangs was always kind, and open, and honest, and better than he had any right to be. But Sweet Pea has spent the whole year not knowing how to say things. Wishing he could tell Ace that he was kind, and wonderful, and infinitely better than the parents they didn’t have, and never speaking.

“You didn’t have to,” says Sweet Pea, instead.

“Sure I did.” Ace smiles. “It’s Christmas.”

Something is wrong with Ace: his smile is pulled too tight, his cheer too forced. He says the word, _Christmas_ , but he doesn’t mean it. There are angry lines in the corners of Ace’s mouth. His hands are busy peeling the label off a new bottle of beer.

“What happened at work?”

“Nothing,” says Ace. “Nothing you have to worry about.”

“I want to worry,” says Sweet Pea.

Ace laughs. It is not a mean laugh, but it is not a happy one. The laugh says _don’t push it._

Sweet Pea had meant to get himself a drink of water, but now that he’s in the kitchen he can’t find the energy. He takes his jacket off, sits down in a kitchen chair and rests his head on the table. He pillows it in the crook of his arm to keep it lifted slightly up.

“You okay?” Ace asks. He sighs and pushes himself up off the counter. “Sick, or just drunk?”

“Just drunk,” says Sweet Pea, though the cold had sapped most of the warm glow from his head and fingertips. Ace laughs a smaller laugh, one that has no more joy in it than the other one. He goes to open his bottle of beer and catches his finger. Cries out and throws the bottle opener so that the little tool clatters loud across the counter and into the opposite wall. Ace is breathing hard.

“Sorry,” he says. “Did I tell you about these fags at the factory? They’re driving me fucking-”

A younger Ace would have kicked the counter, but this Ace has to play parent and doesn’t. He breathes in hard and then breathes out again. Sweet Pea goes very still and very small and very cold.

“It’s not a big deal,” says Ace. “I mean, nothing to fuckin’ ruin Christmas over.”

Ruin Christmas. Sweet Pea had not considered such a thing. That you could take all this and spoil it.

“I’m a fag,” he says.

Ace doesn’t even hear him. “What?”

Sweet Pea lifts his head up. He is not shaking. He feels instead an infinite stillness in him, swirling out from the sore places in his chest and settling all the way down to his iceblock fingers and toes. It serves him right if Ace throws him out. Sweet Pea does not deserve this: the tree and the presents and the ornaments. Those ornaments make him sadder than anything: clean and bright and shiny and nice, one or two with the price tags still on. The only nice thing they’d had in a long time.

“I’m a fag,” he says again.

Ace looks at him. Doesn’t understand what Sweet Pea’s telling him.

“I wanna fuck boys,” says Sweet Pea, his fingers starting to shake now, because _fuck_ is an easier word to say than _love_ , or even _like_. The stillness is gone from him all of a sudden: the shakes climb up from his fingers and into his arms until he’s shivering. “I’m a faggot, I’m telling you.”

“Sweet Pea, calm down,” says Ace, almost a laugh. “I know you’re not.”

Sweet Pea trembles like a leaf. “I am. I am.”

“You’re not, though,” says Ace, getting mad. “I’d know if you were.”

“I’m bisexual,” he says, and the word sounds wrong in his throat, and worse still in the air of the room.

“You’re _what_?!” snaps Ace, and Sweet Pea knows what he’s thinking. Ace can understand straight and Ace can understand gay, which isn’t your fault but just a break in your code, like the cracked Christmas angel on Becky’s table, but something like bisexual, a word like that - that was soft. That was something that could be helped. If you had a word that big for it then that must be something you wanted to be.

Sweet Pea’s nose is running. “Fuck off!” he yells, rising abruptly from the table and wiping it anxiously on his sleeve. “Fuck you, Ace. Fuck you.”

“Sweet Pea, you’re delusional,” says Ace. There is a little tickle of mad in it, but for the most part he is calm. More calm than he has any right to be. Sweet Pea wants him to get mad. Sweet Pea wants to be shaken around a bit. “Calm down.”

“I’m not delusional!” Sweet Pea shouts. “I mean it!”

Ace stands there looking at him. His brow is furrowed unpleasantly, and his face is unhappy. Ace had not wanted Christmas Eve to end up like this. Ace’s mouth drops open suddenly, and his eyes bulge a little.

“Is that what you do with Fangs all the time? Is that what you two were doing tonight?” Ace steps closer to him. “Are you and Fangs-”

“NO!” sobs Sweet Pea, and turns on his heel, his heart up somewhere in the vicinity of his throat. He hates that his brother had thought of that. Nothing could be further from the truth. But he wants it to be true, and maybe that’s worse.

“Then _who_ , Sweet Pea!?” Sweet Pea runs, and Ace follows him to the bathroom, the hot anger leaching out of his voice. “Sweet Pea, come back. You’re not. It’s okay. You’re just confused.”

“Fuck you!” The door slams.

“Sweet Pea!” Ace throws himself against the door. “Open this right now!”

Sweet Pea waits a second until Ace’s body weight lets up from against the wood. Then he throws it open as fast as he can, smashing his brother in the face with the door.

“Ow! _Fuck_!” Ace reaches out to grab him, but Sweet Pea is too fast. He dashes past him and heads for the front door, for the stairs. Back out into the cold.

“Sweet Pea, wait!” yells Ace, the front door banging open above him, but Sweet Pea is already swinging his leg over the motorcycle, the one his brother had taught him to ride.

The bike leaps forward and leads him out into the snow. Ace is yelling at him, but Sweet Pea doesn’t listen. His heart is thumping hard enough in his chest that he can feel it, a rough, heavy pulse against his ribs. His jacket is back in the kitchen, but the adrenaline is keeping him warm, and all he wants is to get out, to get away.

So he drives.

He hates himself for doing it. It was stupid. But you couldn’t take this kind of shit back. He tries to ignore it - the cold is settling in his bones, now, and he’s cold enough to ignore it - but his treacherous mind won’t stop letting the thoughts in. Telling him that if Ace started talking to people, and if Ace told Fangs-

Sweet Pea thinks if he drives faster it might warm him up. He needs to get inside somewhere, but he’s going in the wrong direction for the trailer park, and if he turns around he won’t be able to outpace his thoughts anymore. He’ll have to think them.

Far ahead of him, the spire of the church stretches all the way up into the sky like it’s trying to touch heaven.

Sweet Pea points his handlebars at it like they are the prow of a boat, and drives.


	13. why lies he in such mean estate?

**december 24**

He feels afraid. The church is so big. Just the door of it is as heavy and as tall as the door of a castle. Sweet Pea’s arms feel limp and noodly from the wind. There is no way he can open that door.

His bike parked, he stumbles toward it. Snow is beginning to fall, and it dances light and soft in the wind around him. Some of it gets in his eyes, and he blinks quickly to clear them. His head is spinning and pounding like the world’s worst hangover. Through the fog of it he can hear voices, coming from inside the church and out through the walls and the heavy door. There are people singing.

Sweet Pea is scared. He’s never been in a church. He didn’t know that you sang. He wonders if it’s the pageant.

There is a man and a woman going up the stairs ahead of him. The man holds the door open for him. Sweet Pea sees him in flashes: the black coat, the brown hands, the shoes. His wide smile as Sweet Pea passes him: all white teeth in a round, happy face.

“Merry Christmas,” says the man and Sweet Pea jumps about a foot when he realizes he’s talking to him. He ducks his head down and doesn’t reply. He can feel the man looking curiously at him.

“Come on, Terry,” he hears the woman say. “It’s starting.”

The room he enters next is impossibly white, and packed to the gills with people. People are lined elbow-to-elbow all the way across the room, in sweaters and coats and scarves of every colour. Sweet Pea cranes his neck far back to see the ceiling. It is so tall and so towering that the lights up there look as tiny as buttons. Far above him, white-bladed ceiling fans turn slowly. The windows on the sides of the room are colourful glass.

Sweet Pea’s head swims. He feels hot and tired and disoriented. All of the seats seem to be full - they are long benches, not chairs, and they make him think momentarily of coffins - but there is a row of empty folded chairs at the back. Sweet Pea looks at them and then looks around the room for Fangs. Although the room is packed with people, he doesn’t see the Conroys.

“Excuse me,” mumbles Sweet Pea, and tries to push through a group of ladies in fur coats. He walks halfway up the aisle, not wanting to get too close to the front. Fangs and his family are nowhere to be found. Sweet Pea turns around and goes back.

“Are you lost?” asks a black woman sitting to his right. She leans over to him like they have a secret. Sweet Pea shakes his head at her.

“Well, you’re welcome to sit with us,” she says, and pats the bench beside her. Her son, a tall, square-jawed boy in a purple sweater, turns to look at him. “Move over, Chuck.”

“That’s okay,” says Sweet Pea. His tongue feels too heavy in his mouth. “I’ll sit at the back.”

He walks back slowly, looking all around for Fangs. His eyes are filling with tears again and it’s hard to see. He doesn’t know what he’s doing here. He doesn’t know how to go to church. He doesn’t even know the words to the songs, even though everyone else seems to. Christmas songs, but they are not playing Wham! in here. These are real Christmas songs. _Carols._  

Sweet Pea doesn’t know any carols.

Sweet Pea sits quietly down on one of the folding chairs in the back. If nothing else, the church is warm. All these nice normal people who had never done stupid, stupid, stupid things like tell their brother they were a faggot and then take off running. They have a lot of body heat to share.

Sweet Pea squeezes his hands tight together and stares straight ahead. Through the maze of bodies and coats and arms he can just make out the front of the church, raised up a little bit like the stage in the cafeteria at school. Only nicer. There is a slim golden cross hanging high on the wall, and Sweet Pea is afraid to look at it. Sweet Pea is not a religious person. But just on the off chance there is a God, Sweet Pea doesn’t want God to know he’s there.

All around him, the voices are singing. It is scary and it is lovely in equal measure. Sweet Pea looks around one last time for Fangs, but he isn’t there. Sweet Pea knows nobody, and no one knows him. It doesn’t matter that the man had held the door for him or that the woman had been friendly. He feels like crying. He does not belong here.

But if not here, where? Where else was there to go?

The thought of going to the trailer park is only half-formed in his mind when he stands up to leave. Another man opens the door for him when he goes. There is no lack of manners in this congregation. Christmas is a time for helping others. Holding doors.

Sweet Pea hurries through the door and lets it bang behind him, trapping the voices inside.

He walks quickly, to keep the cold off him. The snow is still falling and the powder under his feet crunches and glitters like jewels. It’s not until his feet are crossing the railroad tracks that he realizes he had gone the wrong way. The trailer park was in the other direction. Sweet Pea cups his hands around his elbows and hugs himself tight. It is bitterly cold. Death cold.

He had left without his bike, and he has no interest in going back for it. Instead he stumbles forward, arms around himself, pressing on to some unknown destination, somewhere without people, without carols, without light.

 _I am wrong_ , he thinks. _I am wrong here._

He walks up through the Northside, following the route he had taken with Fangs only hours before. The Christmas lights seem brighter still through the storm. He doesn’t know what he is expecting to find. Not Fangs, surely. Fangs has a home to go to. Warmth and family and light. Sweet Pea had just thrown all that away. And for what?

He comes up to the house with the tower and stands looking at it. The windows are lit, and through the drawn curtains he can see the glowing, conical constellation of a Christmas tree. There are gauzy figures moving behind the curtain, and next to the tower, a chimney streams beautiful smoke up into the black sky.

 _A fireplace_ , thinks Sweet Pea. Wishes Fangs was here. He could turn to him and tell him.

No, enough. He couldn’t think about Fangs anymore. Not ever again.

The wind has sapped his strength, and he wavers as he tries to move his way through snowdrifts. When a patch of ice catches the smooth flat of his running shoe he spills backward and lets it carry him. His head hits the concrete with a sharp _smack_ that brings tears to his eyes. He lays there stunned, thinking of his Serpent initiation, and how it had hurt less than this, even with the brass knuckles. Remembers his brother in their kitchen before he’d run the gauntlet, tucking a loose strand of Sweet Pea’s hair behind his ear the way he always had when he was telling Sweet Pea something important.

“They ain’t gonna hurt you bad,” Ace had promised. “Not my brother. Just make sure you get back up. Whatever you do, get back up.”

Sweet Pea had got back up. Sweet Pea had always done what his brother told him. Sweet Pea had got up, and Fangs had got up, and Jones had got up at the end, Jones with the warm hands who had first started to bother him the way Fangs had bothered him, who had first handed him that word in all it’s tangled glory, the one Fred Andrews kept in those faded pastel photographs for him, pretending it was soft and safe. Bisexual was not soft. It had teeth and it bit you and stung you like needles. Bisexual was not fake posed prom photos at Pop’s. The word was this: cold, and winter, and a church service that went on without you.

He presses his hands to his face and feels warmth rising off his skin. Thinks of his Tylenol Cold and Flu, sitting a million miles away in the pocket of his leather jacket.

The snow is falling. December snow: thick, white and toasty. The kind you could go to sleep in.

Sweet Pea doesn’t get back up this time.


	14. and man, at war with man, hears not

**december 24**

Ace runs.

He has the car, but he’d left it at the church where he’d found Sweet Pea’s motorbike. The roads weren’t plowed, anyways. Quicker to run. Ace had always trusted his own two feet more than anything else.

Every snowflake that tumbles past his line of sight makes him more afraid. Sweet Pea is out here with no jacket on. Ace has a jacket and a scarf, and Ace is freezing.

FP’s boyfriend had put weird ideas in his head, was the thing. That word - bisexual. The whole _liking boys_ thing. That kind of shit was okay for people like FP, people who could defend themselves, but not Ace’s baby brother. That was shit that got you killed.

Ace is scared of the church. Ace Rizzio has been to church only once in his life, when he had been trying to impress a girl in his sixth-grade class, Sarah. He had sat two pews over from her family on Sunday morning and tried his best to look dutiful. It must have worked, because they had dated for a week. A week was not a long time when you were twenty-two, but in sixth grade it was pretty good.

The only bible story Ace knew was Cain and Abel. Well, and the Adam and Eve bit about the snake and the apple, but only because FP and the adult serpents were always making some corny reference to it. Cain and Abel is much worse. He doesn’t like thinking about that one right now. How the older brother had killed the younger one.

He can no longer see the church when he looks back. His sneakers are soaked through with snow. Ace squints up at the street sign he’s come up to. There was an O- an L-

Olin Avenue. Fangs’ house. The thought comes to him with a deep kind of relief. Sweet Pea would have gone to Fangs. And even suppose he hadn’t - Fangs had a foster family who lived here. Real adults. They would know what to do. They would tell him what to do. They would help him find his brother before something bad happened. Something that would be Ace’s fault.

Their house is small, and slightly shabby. Ace squints through the snow as he hurries up to the porch. The wind is vicious and cruel, almost knocking him off his feet. No one should be out in this snow. Least of all Sweet Pea. Sweet Pea was taller than him, but not bigger.

Why hadn’t he stopped him? Why had he let him leave?

Ace pounds on the door until his knuckles feel close to bursting. The man who answers it has grey hair and a dark moustache in a tired, square face. He looks like a father. Not Ace’s father, but _a_ father. How you want a father to look. He has a broad, heavy chest under a red sweater, and it’s all Ace can do not to fall against it and cry.

“Yes?” The man looks suspicious, like FP’s boyfriend had when they’d turned up at his door. Ace wants to cry. Didn’t they deserve more than standing on people’s doorsteps while they wanted to keep you out?

“It’s my little brother,” he explains desperately to the man, his voice shaking. He feels as thin and as breakable as ice. “He’s out here in the storm somewhere and I don’t know where he is.”

Before he can start to cry, a woman joins them at the door. She has white hair pulled up onto her head and bright snowflake earrings dangling from her ears. Actual concern seems to flit across the man’s features. He steps closer, out onto the porch with Ace.

“How old is he?”

Ace realizes they expect Sweet Pea to be five years old. “Sixteen.”  

“What is it?” asks the woman.

“His brother’s missing.” The man turns back to Ace. His eyes are warm and old. “Son, if he’s sixteen, he’s smart enough to get inside. It’s freezing out.”

“But-“ Ace doesn’t know how to explain that this is different. His voice sounds wet and frightened and hysterical. “We had a fight, and he’s drunk. He doesn’t have a coat.” His eyes are burning and he rubs them frantically with his knuckles. “He doesn’t have anywhere to go.”

A hand touches his shoulder. Ace looks down at it, amazed to realize that it’s attached to Mr. Conroy. It lingers for half a second, and then drops. “Has he got any friends he might go to?”

“Fangs”, chokes out Ace, seizing the name like a lifeline. “Fangs is his friend. That’s why I came here. I thought maybe-”

“Fangs-!” calls the woman into the house, and then Fangs is there. He fills the space between their shoulders so that the three of them are taking up the door frame: a wall against the cold. A pair of silver dog tags hangs around his neck.

“Is Sweet Pea there?” gasps Ace.

Fangs shakes his head no. “Why?” he asks.

Mr. Conroy is looking at Ace. “How long has he been gone?” he says.

“I don’t know.” Fangs squeezes out the front door and past them, as noiselessly as a ghost. “He went to the church first. I think he thought you were there.”

“We went to the nine-o'clock service,” says Mrs. Conroy. Her eyes are wide and worried. “They must have started the eleven.”

“I just came from there,” says Ace. “We had a fight at home and he ran out. And went to the church. And now I don’t know. He doesn’t have a coat,” he repeats helplessly.

Mr. Conroy holds both of Ace’s shoulders. “Is he on foot?”

“Yes.” Ace nods quickly. “He left his bike.”

“Then he can’t be too far. If he hasn’t got a coat, he must be inside somewhere. He’s probably waiting out the storm.”

Ace shakes his head. One of the hands holding his shoulders squeezes. “Do you know where he might have gone?” asks Mr. Conroy.

“I do,” says Fangs quietly. Everyone turns to look at him. “I think I do.”

 _God!_ Thinks Ace. It is the first time he has thought of God’s name since they told him about Cain and Abel in sixth grade. _Please, God, let Fangs be right. It’s so cold out._

Mr. Conroy steps into action. He goes inside the front hall and comes back with a set of car keys. He shrugs on a jacket and hands one to Fangs. “Summer, you stay here,” he says to his wife. “In case he turns up. Call some of the neighbours. I have my cell phone.”

Mr Conroy puts one hand on the back of Fangs’ neck and the other on the back of Ace’s,

“Don’t panic,” he says to Ace. And then, to Fangs: “You just tell me where to drive.”


	15. trim the tree and wrap the presents

**december 24**

The house is Christmas-card perfect, but Fred feels like it is waiting for something.

It’s Mary, of course. It’s always Mary. That’s the illustration in all the paintings: mother, father, golden lab, little boy. The missing puzzle piece. You cannot have a Christmas with only two people. Archie has cried about it already: private, guilty, sixteen-year-old crying that no one else was supposed to hear. Fred had felt like his heart was being cleaved in half.

They sit on the couch under the tree now, Archie in a new set of pyjamas that had been an early Christmas gift, Fred in flannel bottoms and an old _Riverdale U_ T-shirt. There was one perk of post-hospital weight loss: you could fit into your old college wardrobe again. It wraps around him like a second skin. Archie leans against him, and Fred feels warm, deep and safe in his gut. He has two more years until Archie goes to college. Only two. There is no way Fred can fit the breadth of everything he wants to do with Archie into those two little years. Two years is not enough time to make him okay with the fact of his son leaving him.

Fred has always been the one to come through with a Christmas miracle. A handmade version of the toy no one else could find. A well-placed phone call once Archie was asleep. A final, secret package unearthed from underneath the sofa when the tree had finally run bare. Gifts you hid in the garage because they were too big for the living room.

But Mary will not be in the garage, Christmas morning. There is nothing Fred can do or say or give that will bring Mary home. He has been watching the weather forecast: planes are down across the state because of the bad weather. Even if she boarded one now, there would not be time.

This year, Fred is out of miracles.

He has to tell his son this. Somehow, quickly, before Christmas comes, before Archie lets himself hope and gets his heart broken all over again. He has to dash his son’s hopes like a broken ornament. Trample them until there’s nothing left, not even a sliver, until they’re just dust and powder and rot. Sweep them up and throw them out the door. Close them out in the cold.

Fred would rather swallow a lightbulb than do this. But sometimes fatherhood stops being tickle fights and band-aids on scraped knees and first days of school. Sometimes it means you look your kids in the eye and put their dreams right out with the trash.

Nothing scares Fred more in the whole wide world.

“You know,” he begins, combing a hand through Archie’s hair, “even if your mom wanted to, she wouldn’t be able to catch a plane in this storm. It’s a bit too late.” Fred’s eyes are tired. His heart is tired. He keeps stroking Archie’s head, as though it will take away the ugliness of what he is saying. “She’s just figuring things out. It’s not that she doesn’t want to see you. But she’s not going to be here, tomorrow, Archie. I’m sorry. Don’t get your hopes up.”

“I know,” says Archie. He sits up a little so that his warmth lifts momentarily off of Fred’s ribcage, and turns to face him. “I know, Dad. It’s okay.”

“I just don’t want you to be disappointed,” says Fred. “On Christmas.”

Archie’s hand touches his right side very gently, the place where the bullet had gone in. When Fred doesn’t flinch, he flattens his palm over it, a small square of warmth against the thin fabric of his shirt.

“I don’t care,” says Archie, his eyes burning into Fred’s face. He looks startlingly like Mary in his ferocity. “This is all I wanted, Dad. I don’t want presents or anything. I just wanted to spend Christmas with you.”

 _Alive_ , says the hand pressing against his scar. _All I wanted for Christmas was for you to live._

Who had ever come up with the idea that Christmas made children greedy? It was the adults who were greedy. The children wanted so little. And they deserved so much.

Archie pushes up off Fred, gets up off the sofa, and grins. He is beautiful with that grin. There’s hope in it. His freckles scrunch up and his eyes glimmer. Fred had ruined nothing after all.

“I have a new Christmas tradition,” he says. “Since you can’t play baseball. Hear me out.”

“I’m listening.”

“Christmas karaoke,” says Archie. The smile swells on his face until he seems to glow with it. To Fred’s tired eyes, he looks like an angel. “Come on,” he says. His hand reaches down for Fred, and Fred takes it. “I’ll set up the TV. Try to impress me.”


	16. oh bethlehem, bethlehem, welcome this stranger

**december 24**

Sweet Pea thinks he is dreaming.

He is no longer freezing, but he doesn’t feel warm. The snow is still falling right into his face, but he doesn't feel it when it lands. Someone is bending over him, a blurry grey shape in all the snow.

Ace, he tries to ask, but his mouth doesn’t move.

“Sweet Pea!”

The person is so close to him now, holding him tight. Sweet Pea doesn’t feel it. He’s on his back, looking up at the sky. Far, far away, he can see stars. Or maybe Christmas lights.

“I’ve got you,” says the person holding him. “I’ve got you.”

He looks at the person again, and then he recognizes them. Or maybe it’s the dream, still. But it looks like Fangs. Fangs moves, and the dog tags around his neck swing down above Sweet Pea in an arc. They catch a glint of streetlight and glimmer.

“You’re still wearing them,” he says.

“Yeah,” says Fangs, or maybe Sweet Pea just dreams he does. He touches them on his chest. “I love them.”

Sweet Pea doesn’t know what to say to this. His brain catches on that one word and holds it. Love. He tries to hold tight to it, but it melts like snow in his fingers.

“Hang on, okay, Sweet Pea? My foster dad’s out here.” Fangs is frantic. His hand finds Sweet Pea’s in the snow, and squeezes tight. Sweet Pea’s mind gets stuck on that squeeze. The softness of it. He moves his head very slowly and painfully so that he can see their hands, and in the dim, colour-blotched light he notices Fangs has laced their fingers. A beam of strong light blazes across it, throwing their clasped hands into bright relief.

“Hang on, Sweet Pea,” says Fangs, and holds his hand. “There’s a car coming.”

Sweet Pea tries.

* * *

**december 24**

_(have yourself a merry little christmas)_

The trailer is silent when Jughead gets back. He had known it would be silent. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.

Jughead sits down on the couch and wraps his arms around himself for warmth. Their heating is on, but the wind is so cold that it seems to tear through the walls and blow the heat right out of the room. The aluminum sides of the trailer scream in the storm.

Jughead stares at the trailer floor, littered with remnants from their party. He feels empty, used up. Christmas may as well be over. He might as well start taking the decorations down, only he can’t find the strength. Can’t even find the strength to move to the bed.

He wonders what his foster parents are doing, the ones he’d never even given a chance. Where Julian and his brother are, if they’re in the trailer or back at the hospital, waiting for an end or a miracle, either one. Is Jellybean having a real Christmas right now? Is she wishing as much as he does that things were different?

There’s a vinyl record wrapped in Christmas paper at the back of his closet. Just in case. Just in the off chance of a miracle.

Jughead is learning that miracles don’t happen very often. But no sense in being unprepared.

* * *

**december 24**

“Will you read to me?” asks Archie.

Fred looks at him in surprise. Archie hasn’t asked Fred to read to him for at least six years. “What do you want me to read?”

Archie scoffs, and Fred loves him all over again, all at once and forever and more than anything else on earth. “The Night Before Christmas. Duh.”

“You read it with me.”

“Well...okay,” says Archie, as though this is a great burden on his soul. He scoots off the couch to go get the hardcover, the one they’ve owned as long as Archie has been alive. Mary and Fred used to read that to him together.

“You start,” says Archie when he returns. They’re both breathless from singing, dishevelled. Leans back up against Fred in his new pyjamas.

“We’ll alternate. I read a page and you read a page.”

“Cool,” says Archie.

They’re huddled on the couch together when the doorbell rings, Fred reading: _as dry leaves before the wild hurricane fly._ Archie sits up at the same time as him, and Fred knows they’re thinking the same thing.

Mary. In the eleventh hour, the magic hour, the one where Christmas Eve became Christmas Day and peace was on earth and goodwill toward men and the snow like a crystal blanket on the rooftops. Mary had come after all.

His thoughts are not charitable. He is angry at her, angry for pretending to take his son’s hope away and then rewarding it, because she knew as well as he did that Archie never stopped hoping, not ever. Angry at her for coming in and stealing his Christmas at the last moment, making herself the good guy, redeemable, and all his effort and love forgettable and plain. He no longer wants her there. He no longer wants her anywhere. Not the woman he’d met at the altar, not the redhead with her face turned up to him under the jukebox mistletoe.

But as Archie’s mother? Could he want that for a night?

Archie scrambles off the couch, and Fred thinks for Archie’s sake he thinks he could want just about anything.

But it’s not Mary, when they open the door. It’s Jughead.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “But I was sitting at home, and I just thought - that I should really be here.”

Fred realizes what it is he’s been waiting for.


	17. god rest ye merry gentlemen

**december 24**

The roads are treacherous, the snow swirling violently out his windshield and rattling the car doors. Inside, his mother’s car is warm and dry. Moose Mason has the radio turned up to the Christmas station, and hums quietly along with the programming. Christmas Eve is his favourite day of the year.

Moose drives very carefully out of the Southside and up past the railroad tracks, into the neighbourhood where he and Archie lived. His shift at the soup kitchen on Christmas Eve usually ended by eleven, but they’d had a shortage of staff this year. Moose and his mother had volunteered to stay until the last bowl was served.

Despite the treacherous roads, his mom had let him drive. They’d both agreed that it was probably safer: Mrs. Mason was good at a lot of things, but driving was not one of them. Last week, she had scraped all the paint off the bumper of the car going over a snowdrift. In October, she had got into a squabble in the mall parking lot over a fender bender, and they still received passive-aggressive letters from the other party.

But it is snowing so hard that Mrs. Mason is nervous. “Maybe you should pull over, Moose,” she says. She’s fixing her eyebrows with the mirror from her compact. “I can drive.”

“Don’t worry about it, Mom.” says Moose. He slows prudently down so that the car is barely moving through the neighbourhood. “We’re almost home.”

“There could be ice under the snow.”

“That’s true no matter who drives,” says Moose cheerfully. “I’ll be careful.”

He slams the brakes then, so abruptly that the two of them jerk forward and Mrs. Mason’s eyebrow pencil goes flying down below the dashboard.

“Moose!” she cries, but then falls silent. The person who had rushed at them out of the storm has run around to the drivers side and is pounding on the window.

Moose opens the door. Snow billows in, accompanied by a freezing gust of wind. He feels his breath freeze in his lungs. The person he’d almost run over ducks down to see inside the car. He’s a teenager: young and hard-edged, with dark eyes. Moose thinks he might be a football player for Southside, but he isn’t sure.

“Please help me,” gasps the teenager. “My friend’s hurt. He needs a hospital. Please.” The stranger is crying too hard for Moose to doubt him. “He’s been lying out here in the cold, and I think he’s dying.”

Moose gets out of the car right away. “Where is he?”

Even through the swirling crystal of the snowstorm he can see a dark shape lying a few feet from them. He’s on the McCurdy’s lawn - the family that’s gone off to Florida for the holidays. They have the house next to the one with the cool tower. Their house has no Christmas lights, and the windows are pitch dark. The boy who’d stopped their car had tucked his jacket over him, and in the swirling dark it has the appearance of a funeral shroud.

Mrs. Mason has got out of the car on the other side, and is sprinting in her good boots to where the kid is lying. Between the three of them, they lift the unconscious adolescent into the backseat. He is tall, but light, and breathing.

The first boy is still crying, but less horribly now. “My foster dad’s here somewhere. And his brother. With a car. But we split up. I don’t know where he is. He needs an ambulance, or-”

“No time for that,” says Moose. “I’ll drive you to the hospital.”

Moose’s mother is taking his pulse. “He’s breathing,” she says. “He’s okay.” She hugs the crying boy to her chest. “Get in the car,” she says. “Give your dad a phone call. My boy’s a good driver.”

Moose closes his eyes in the dark and _wishes_.


	18. all is calm, all is bright

**christmas day**

Fred has gifts for Jughead when he wakes up in the morning. Jughead doesn’t know how he did it. He counts them under the tree as Archie’s tearing into his stocking: four gifts with his name on them, all wrapped beautifully in green paper.

“Don’t ask me,” says Fred, when Jughead asks where the hell they’re from. “Ask Santa.”

“I just did,” says Jughead, and Fred punches him in the arm, a smile playing on his lips. “Ssh. Archie still believes.”

The house smells like cinnamon and sugar. Fred makes them stacks of pancakes for breakfast, and there are cinnamon buns rising in the oven. Jughead had mixed the icing himself. A brand new bag of Christmas oranges is open on the table, the citrus fragrance of them sharp and homey. Fred’s stereo floats Christmas carols out into the warm air of the room.

Vegas lays his head in Jughead’s lap, drooling a bit on the leg of Archie’s borrowed pyjamas, and Jughead scratches his ears. Archie is sorting the edible contents of his stocking into two piles: one for Jughead, and one for himself. Fred filches a mint truffle out of the _Archie_ pile and wanders back into the kitchen with it before he can notice.

Mary phones, as promised, and Archie goes to the kitchen to take it. Fred drops into a seat beside Jughead on the sofa.

“Are you feeling alright, Jughead?”

“Why?”

“Well, you’ve been here a day and you haven’t tried to relieve me of my Christmas cookies yet.”

Jughead grins. “I’m fine.”

“It’s an okay Christmas?”

“Yeah,” says Jughead again, and hugs him tightly. “It’s a great Christmas.”

Fred smiles at the affection. “All right. Let Archie talk to his mom for a bit, and then we’ll do presents.”

Outside the front window, last night’s storm has settled into beautiful, powdery snow cover. The sun makes it sparkle like diamonds. Fred’s ancient Christmas album pops and crackles under the needle of his record player like a fire. Jughead thinks it’s the nicest sound he’s ever heard.

“You visited my dad,” says Jughead quietly, looking at the snow.

“Yeah,” says Fred. “I did.”

There’s a lot contained in those few words, and Jughead feels like hugging him again. He settles for leaning his head against the uninjured side of Fred’s chest. One of Fred’s hands comes up and absently runs through his bangs, politely avoiding skimming under his beanie.

“I’m sorry I didn’t get you anything,” says Jughead.

“You did,” insists Fred. He picks up an adhesive bow off the arm of the sofa and slaps it on Jughead’s forehead. “You came to spend Christmas with us.”

“That’s not a present.”

“Sure it is,” says Fred. “I get the satisfaction of knowing I’m your favourite out of all your other friends’ dads.”

“Well, between Hal Cooper and Hiram Lodge, you didn’t have a lot of competition,” Jughead deadpans, reaching up to tug the bow off his face.

“There you go,” says Fred. “You’re insulting Hiram Lodge. I’m feeling merry already.”

* * *

**christmas day**

The room Sweet Pea wakes up in is so white that he thinks for a moment he must still be outdoors, and covered in snow. He blinks a couple times, and it reasserts itself into a hospital room. There’s a needle in his arm, going up to a clear bag filled with fluid. It doesn’t bug him. Sweet Pea isn’t afraid of needles: he has tattoos in places most boys would cry at.

There’s something heavy sitting on his leg, and Sweet Pea glances down the length of his body. Someone with dark hair is seated at the side of his bed, sleeping with their head resting on his knees.

 _Ace_ , he thinks, and jiggles one of his knees up.

The person raises their head. It’s Fangs, the dog tags jingling around his neck as he sits up. Fangs cracks a big smile when he sees him. “Hey. You’re up.”

“Yeah.” Sweet Pea’s astounded to find he feels better than he has in days. His head feels clear and right and steady. His throat is smooth when he swallows, and his chest no longer crackles when he breathes in. “Is it Christmas?”

“You bet.” Fangs grins, letting his eyetooth show again. “And you’re free to go home whenever, I think they said. As long as you wake up and feel okay.”

“Is Ace here?”

“Yeah. He’s been in here all night. He just went to the bathroom.” Fangs scoots his chair closer to the side of the bed. “That was some crazy shit. Don’t do it again, okay?”

“Okay.” Sweet Pea smirks. He turns his hand palm-side up on the bed, just in case Fangs wants to hold it. “How’d you find me?”

“My dad,” says Fangs. Sweet Pea notices he doesn’t say _foster dad_. “Ace came to our door freaking out about you. I told him to go to the Northside. To that house with the tower. I didn’t know if that’s where you’d go, but I figured we might as well look.”

“Shit,” says Sweet Pea. “That’s cool.”

“Turns out the Conroys are pretty cool after all,” adds Fangs with an anxious grin. “Mr. Conroy’s been telling me these crazy war stories. He’s been here all night with us. Did you know he used to build racecars? He used to drag race down here. Isn’t that fucked up?”

Sweet Pea reaches out and touches the dog tags around Fangs’ neck. Fangs leans forward to let him do it easier.

“I’m glad you like these,” says Sweet Pea. “I was worried you wouldn’t.”

Fangs snorts. “As fucking if. You know me.”

“You wouldn’t really join the army, would you?”

“I don’t have to. Enough excitement right here in good old Riverdale, U-S-A.”

Sweet Pea laughs. The door cracks open, and Ace comes back in. He freezes when he sees Sweet Pea awake.

“Hey,” says Ace guiltily, eyes sweeping over the two of them. Sweet Pea feels his gut clench. “Fangs, can you go get us something to drink?”

Fangs goes. Sweet Pea feels nervous. He doesn’t know what to say to Ace when they’re alone. He doesn’t know how to justify running away, or yelling the things that he had. The thought of having to say it all again petrifies him. He doesn’t think that he could. Thinks he might go back on it if Ace makes him try.

He doesn’t have to worry, though, because Ace launches into speaking without waiting for another word. “Sweet Pea,” says Ace hurriedly, pacing at the foot of his bed, “I’m so fucking sorry I made you think - think that you couldn’t tell me the truth about stuff. Or that I wouldn’t do right by you if I knew. Or if you thought I’d throw you out, or - or what.”

Sweet Pea nods. “I didn’t think that,” he offers quietly. “I dunno what I thought. Sorry I freaked out on you.”

Ace pauses to look at him, hands twisted together, and the shadows under his eyes are as long and as dark as bruises. “Sweet Pea, I could never, ever hate you, okay?” He comes close to the bed, reaching and hovering his fingers above the covers as though he doesn’t dare to touch. “I just thought you were someone different, that’s all. I didn’t know.”

“I’m still me.”

“Yeah.” Ace squeezes his hand, the one he’d left palm-up for Fangs to grab. “Yeah, you are. And if you’re worried about what anyone’s gonna say, don’t be. I’m not gonna let anyone say shit about you. Deal?”

Sweet Pea tries to swallow the lump in his throat. He never cries in front of Ace. “Deal.”

“You’re the only brother I’ve got,” Ace repeats, smoothing his hand gently through Sweet Pea’s hair. “I’m not gonna let anyone say something. Or hurt you, or anything. And I’m going to be better from now on. I promise.”

“I’m gonna be better too.”

“You don’t have to be better. You’re perfect.” Ace kneels on the chair Fangs had left and wraps his arms tight around Sweet Pea’s torso. “Please say you forgive me, okay?”

“Yes,” insists Sweet Pea, squeezing him as tight as he can. “Of course I do. Idiot.”

“Idiot,” repeats Ace somewhere above Sweet Pea’s shoulder, his voice wetter than normal. “Let’s go home. I didn’t drag that tree in for nothing.”


	19. shepherds, why this jubilee?

**christmas day**

Fred makes the two of them save the biggest package for last, much to his son’s chagrin. When he and Jughead have obliterated the wrapping from every other present, (and Fred has delightedly unwrapped a pair of socks, a comb, and a paperback book) he finally drags it out from behind the tree and sets it in front of them.

“Go to town.” 

“Dad!” complains Archie. “You bought me too much.”

“I can take it back,” teases Fred, pulling the package toward him. Archie laughs and grabs it back. 

“Let’s not be hasty.” 

Fred has not spent this much on a present in years, not since they had two incomes and only company debt, debt that was a lot less scary on the page. It makes him a little nervous. He feels better that Archie can use it for school. And for music. It was not a gift, then, but an investment in his son’s future. Fred would invest every dollar he had in that if he could. 

Jughead and Archie tear into it. Fred gets up to go check on the bread and refill his coffee, listening to the two of them yelling in the other room. Below their voices, Bing Crosby is crooning on the stereo. 

Mary didn’t know what she was missing.

When he gets back, Archie is frantically taking every piece out of the package, as if to verify its contents as real. Fred smiles and sits down with his mug. 

“The girl at the store said you can make all your records from there, now,” says Fred, watching Archie lift up the box to read the bottom. “At least it’ll help when you’re starting out. I got you the big one so you can actually see the screen. Some of the other ones were really small.” 

Jughead beams at him, but Archie is too busy discovering the piano keyboard. The look on his face is the one he used to have unwrapping baseball bats and snow saucers as a child. It makes Fred’s heart ache in the best way possible. 

“One keyboard for typing, one keyboard for music. There’s a software you have to buy with it to mix music and stuff, but that’s what the gift card is for.” Fred waits, anxious. “That’s what you wanted, right?” 

“Yes!” yells Archie and throws himself into Fred’s arms so that he almost spills his coffee. “How’d you know?! I didn’t tell you.” 

“I know everything,” says Fred seriously. “Remember that next time you two break a lamp.” 

Archie leaps up, clapping in delight, and Fred holds up a hand to speak. “This is yours, but  _ only  _ if you use it half for music, half for school. That’s why I got you the other keyboard. It can connects to the internet. You can use it for googling things.” 

Archie and Jughead share a tired, affectionate look that means Fred’s said something impossibly stupid, but he presses on. 

“Anyway, enjoy it. But the second your grades go down, that baby’s history. Comprendez?” 

“Comprendez, papa.” replies Archie with a grin. “This is really cool.” 

“And Jughead gets to play on it whenever he wants,” adds Fred. 

“Oh, all right, deal. But he can’t break my high scores.” 

Fred laughs, but Jughead doesn’t react. The younger boy is staring down at the wrapping paper under the tree, expression unreadable and a little lost. 

“You okay, Jug?” says Fred. 

“I’m just thinking about things,” he says. He smiles, but Fred can tell he’s forcing it. “Sorry.” 

“What kind of things?” asks Fred, sitting down in the mess of gift wrapping. Archie scoots closer to the two of them. 

Jughead opens his mouth. Holds his breath, then shakes his head like he’s shaking snow off. “It’s nothing.” 

“Hey, tell us,” insists Archie. His hand lands on Jughead’s knee and grips it.

“It’s my friend, Julian,” Jughead says, staring down at that hand, then back up at Fred. “My friend’s losing his mother. She’s been sick for a long time and they can’t afford the bills, and he’s already going to have to drop out of school in January. He was going to drop out at the end of the year, but he says there’s no point going back because-” 

“His computer’s broken,” finishes Archie. “Is that the one you were telling me about? Julian?”

“Yeah,” says Jughead, and gives them both a smile. “I worry about him, is all. I might go see him after lunch. Just because-” 

If there’s an end to that sentence, Jughead can’t find it in time. It trails off into the noise of the room: the stereo playing, the dishwasher running, the coffeemaker.

Fred thinks,  _ I have so much. I am so lucky.  _

“Hey, dad?” asks Archie. Fred looks at him. “If I promise to work really hard at school this term - really promise - do you think I can ask Jughead’s friend if he wants this? And give it to him?” His hands tighten on the slim white box from the electronics store, never opened. “I love it, I just - It’s not a laptop, but it’s close.” 

There is another silence, as long and as warm as a year. The timer on Archie’s phone chimes softly, a reminder to take the bread out. “Yeah,” says Fred, at last. “I think so. Jug-” 

He turns to Jughead. “I only bought enough for Christmas dinner for two. How do you feel about us going out to a restaurant? Maybe Julian won’t mind if we bring him Christmas dinner.” 

Jughead reacts as though Fred has handed him something of unattainable value. His eyes go very wide and achingly hopeful. Jughead pretends to be a cynic sometimes: for the benefit of his friends, or for his own, Fred doesn’t know. But Jughead’s face now has no cynicism in it. Every part of him seems to lift: his eyes, his lips, his face, his hands. He quivers with impossible hope. 

Jughead wants to be kind, thinks Fred. He wants it so badly. He wants to give someone a Christmas. Jughead is inscrutable on the best of days. But now he is pure and clear as glass. Fred can see right into him. Jughead has lost hope for his own family. But not Julian’s. Not yet. 

Fred looks at Archie. He had made an investment in his son, but it had paid off in the wrong place. He had invested himself in Archie’s music. He had not counted on his heart. 

“Let’s go,” says Fred, before he can even begin to talk himself out of it. “Julian’s got a brother, hasn’t he? Let’s bring something for him too.” 

* * *

**christmas day**

The phone rings as they’re piling on boots and scarves at the front door, balancing bags and boxes of food. Fred curses under his breath in a momentary slippage of holiday spirit, and sets the boxes he’s holding down on the floor. “Sorry, Jug, I should get that. Just in case-” 

“It’s all right,” says Jughead, watching Fred slip his boots off and head back to the kitchen. Archie, already bundled up, shifts from foot to foot impatiently. Jughead pads a little closer to the kitchen to hear. 

“Hi, Tom.” Fred is saying into the receiver, sounding surprised. He turns his back away from Jughead, which Jughead takes as a cue to stop getting closer. He balls his hands nervously into fists instead.  “Yes, he’s with me. Why do you ask?” 

Jughead’s heart suddenly feels very cold. He’d been in that prison: Christmas didn’t reach there. Anything bad could have happened. Fred is frowning into the phone, brow furrowed like he doesn’t understand what Keller is telling him. “Overcrowding?” 

Jughead looks back at Archie, who lifts his shoulders in a bundled-up shrug. Jughead turns back to Fred, whispering quietly as he can. 

“Is it my dad? What’s going on? Is it okay?” 

“Tom Keller’s cracking up,” Fred says in his direction, covering the receiver, but when he turns around he has the biggest, brightest smile on his face that Jughead’s ever seen. He holds out the phone to him. “Jughead, he wants to talk to you.” 

Jughead swallows and takes the phone with numb fingers, spurred on by Fred’s smile. 

He holds the receiver to his ear, and the first dangerous, trembling, peal of hope begins to sound in his heart. 


	20. good tidings of comfort and joy

**christmas day**

The apartment is still warm when they get back. Ricky and Toni are sitting there, side by side under the Christmas tree, munching popcorn. Hot Dog is sitting at their feet.  

“How the hell’d you get in here?” asks Ace. He folds his arms.

Ricky grins. “Toni can pick locks.”

Toni jumps up and catches Sweet Pea in a hug, Ricky piling on so that he’s momentarily smothered in bodies. “Fangs told us what happened,” says Toni, tightening her grip around him until Sweet Pea knows what a mouse feels like with a boa constrictor. “We’re glad you’re okay.”

“Okay, get out of here,” says Ace, once they’ve stepped down. “Go see your families. It’s Christmas.”

They leave, Hot Dog trotting after them, Toni promising to text him later. Ace wraps a protective arm around Sweet Pea and guides him to a chair.

“I’m okay, Ace,” Sweet Pea protests. “I swear.”

Ace picks up one of the few packages from under the tree and hands it to Sweet Pea, looking oddly shy. “Here,” he says quietly. “If you want to open something or whatever.”

Sweet Pea looks at the tag. It’s from Clarissa. Sweet Pea had no idea Clarissa knew who he was, let alone cared enough to buy him something.

He pulls the ribbon off first: it’s scratchy and thick. Sweet Pea sets it aside and reminds himself to use it on someone’s gift next year. Maybe Fangs.

“Hurry up,” says Ace impatiently, which makes Sweet Pea laugh. When they were little, Sweet Pea was always the irrational one. Ace had been slow and steady and patient.

He slips the paper off. Inside is a pair of hand-knitted grey mittens.

“Yeah, she knows how to knit,” says Ace, looking surprised. Sweet Pea tries them on to make sure they accommodate his long fingers. They fit perfectly.

“I like them,” he says.

“If you’re up for it,” says Ace, “Becky invited us over there for dinner. Her brother is coming. It’s like a family thing. Us, her brother, and them. Only if you want. But if Clarissa’s there you can say thank you.”

Sweet Pea likes that. Family.

“Sounds good,” he says, and then: “Thanks for Christmas, Ace.”

Ace smiles, and it goes all the way to his eyes. A real, honest, glowing smile, like he used to have before their parents left.

“Merry Christmas, Sweet Pea,” he says.

* * *

**christmas day**

Julian’s face when he opens the re-wrapped tablet computer is the only Christmas present Jughead has ever needed. His mouth drops open. His hands shake in disbelief.

“It’s not ideal,” apologizes Jughead. “But it’ll tide you over for the rest of the semester.”

Julian looks at them all. His hands are trembling. Julian had not counted on this miracle. Julian had given up waiting on good news.

“Who are you?” asks Julian when Fred starts unloading food. His eyes are wide as dinner plates. The wry humour and sarcasm that had made Julian and Jughead instant friends has vanished: he is all wonder now, all belief. It makes him look nineteen instead of twenty-two.

“He’s Santa Claus,” says Jughead, and Fred swats him.

“I’m just a man with more food than I can eat.” Fred hands Jughead the bag of oranges, and Jughead hands them to Julian. “You’ll want to hang onto these, they’re delicious.”

“He’s Santa Claus,” whispers Julian to his brother, when Fred turns around again.

“Julian, guess what?” says Jughead, because he can’t keep the news in anymore. He vibrates like a star on the verge of explosion. If he doesn’t tell someone now, he’ll collapse.

“What?” asks Julian faintly, watching Archie stock the fridge. Fred is writing out instructions on when to put the turkey in.

“My dad’s getting out of jail.”

“Holy shit,” says Julian, and then looks guiltily at his little brother. Jughead’s heard Julian’s brother swear worse than that a million times, but Julian is still conscientiously polite around him. Julian lowers his voice so only Jughead can hear. “Holy shit,” he whispers, tears still sparkling in his eyes. “It is Christmas.”

 _It is,_ thinks Jughead. _It is, it is, it is._

“I’m feeling Chinese food,” says Fred as they’re leaving.  

“You always want Chinese food,” says Archie.

“You’re saying you don’t? Fred turns to Jughead. “Jughead, what’s your vote?”

It is the first time the trailer park has ever truly looked clean: there is a perfect newness to it, a fresh start. Their breath rises in the foggy air as they walk. Jughead’s about to put in a good word for Pop’s when Archie stumbles and Fred tosses up an arm to catch him. He grabs his son by the arm and whirls him around, clasping Archie’s face in between his two hands.

“You are, quite possibly,” says Fred to Archie. “The most wonderful, generous, most selfless kid I’ve ever had.”

“I’m the only kid you’ve ever had,” says Archie. “Let’s go home and do karaoke.”


	21. through the years we all will be together

**next christmas**

He finds Fangs leaning against the wall outside the bathroom, a half-empty bottle of beer in his hand.

“I’m under the mistletoe,” says Fangs, and flips Sweet Pea off when he ignores him. Sweet Pea laughs and steps up close to him so that their chests are touching. Fangs’ hand sneaks to his waist and holds him, fingers slipping just a bit under his waistband so they’re cold against the skin.

Sweet Pea wants to warm him up.

Fangs lets Sweet Pea tease his lips open, pressing his tongue into Fangs’ mouth and cupping his neck with one hand. His thumb rolls over the chain from Fangs’ dog tags, and he gently strokes the nape of his neck until he feels him shiver.

“Get a room,” says Ricky, and Fangs flips him off too.

* * *

“What’d you get Fred?” asks Jughead in a whisper, leaning in toward his dad. The Andrews house is decked out for Christmas: every room seems to drip with it. FP licks his lips and looks up toward the kitchen

“You’re fine,” says Jughead. “He’s making dinner.”

“It’s like being in love with the fourth of July,” says FP. “Have I ever told you that?”

“Once or twice,” says Jughead. “I think. Once or twice."


End file.
